Ecological Poetics in Dance and Choreographic Writing

Doctoral Research, University of the Arts Helsinki, Theatre Academy

The subject of my doctoral research is choreographic writing and the ecological poetics of dance, which I examine in relation to the event of performance, emergence of performing bodies and reconstruction of the stage as their habitat.

The research is situated within the framework of artistic research, in the field of choreography. Yet, my artistic practice is interdisciplinary and collaborative by its character. The research takes place both in an academic setting within the university and in the freelance field of dance, and aims to strengthen the link between the two.

The objective of research is to develop choreographic writing as an artistic practice that is able to articulate and work on ecological problems from an embodied poetic perspective. By doing so, the research aims to understand and advance the ability of dance art to address ecological phenomena and processes through experiential corporeality.

In my research I define ecological poetics as an interdisciplinary and post-humanist concept that can be used to perceive and articulate the relationships between the human and the non-human through the means of art. Philosopher Gary Wolfe’s book Ecological Poetics - or Wallace Stevens's Birds (2020) being one important reference. By choreographic writing I mean an instruction, spell, recipe, code, score or script formed from natural language, images and diagrams, which the dancer interprets and implements when performing for the audience in a certain place.

In the research process I situate poiesis, the poetic production, on the edge of soma and eco, system and environment, performing body and its habitat. The process is iterative, cyclical and operates through multiplying the differences, unfolding reciprocal relations and building encounters between the different sides of the edges.

I investigate the formation and manifestation of ecological poetics in the relationships between performing bodies and literary sources, stages constructed in different ways and the dance that inhabits them. I use choreographic writing as an artistic method to both create and explore these relationships in the context of performance. At the same time, the choreographic writing itself is the object of research when I try to form an understanding of what the ecological poetics of dance is and how it works.

The research includes two artistic elements and a commentary. The first artistic element takes the form of a site-responsive choreographic triptych and the second is a long-term practice orientated process which takes place in different environments, conditions and seasons. In the commentary, I critically examine artistic processes and connect the question of ecological poetics in choreographic writing to a wider theoretical context.

Eco-critical study relating to pragmatist philosophy, systems theory, theoretical biology and deconstruction as well as somatic speculative writing and feminist eco-phenomenology are resonating theoretical contexts for the research.

Nature Untitled | Installation | Movements I-III

Two channel audiovisual installation, performance documentation, including three movements

Created in Collaboration: Veli Lehtovaara, Eija-Liisa Ahtila, Jani Hietanen

Duration: 71 min loop, duration of each movement: 23 min, 24 min, 23 min

Content: The installation is composed of performance documentation, moving images used in scenographic elements, texts produced and collected during the choreographic research process and wooden sculptures created for Movement III.

Performative events: Jan 30th at 15h and Feb 6th at 15h, Myllytori 2nd floor.

Pre-examination talk: Feb 7th at 14h. All events are announced and open to the public.

Introduction

Nature Untitled | Movements I - III is the first artistic element of my doctoral research project Nature Untitled | Ecological Poetics in Dance and Choreographic Writing.

NU | I-III is a choreographic triptych and site-responsive dance performance. It is a collaboration between visual artist Eija-Liisa Ahtila, sound designer Jani Hietanen and myself. The triptych was realised together with an international group of artists. The choreography was created in close collaboration with dancers Matilda Aaltonen, Erik Eriksson, Kevin Fay, Elias Girod, Inga Huld Hákonardóttir, Anni Koskinen and Sofia Simola.

The triptych was performed in the context of Moving in November -festival and Zodiak - Centre for New Dance seasonal program in Helsinki between Oct 30 - Nov 13 2022. Each of the three movements was performed in a different location and on two consecutive days.

NU | I-III will be pre-examined based on performance documentation presented in the form of an audiovisual installation. The installation is on public display as part of Claws and Connections - all the world’s senses, a group exhibition on artistic research, organised by Academy of Fine Arts, University of the Arts Helsinki 26.1.-25.2.2024.

As an extension to the installation, there will be two occasions during the exhibition on which dancer Sofia Simola will perform fragments of the choreography live in the exhibition space Myllytori (2nd floor), and I will talk about the research-creation and process in a conversational mode. This extension is included in the first artistic element.

Working Group

My own role in the creation process has been multiple: initiator, choreographer, researcher, editor, as well as responsible of over all direction and production. Eija-Liisa Ahtila created the moving image and sculptures for the performances and collaborated with me especially in thinking about the visuality and spatiality in different movements. Jani Hietanen created the sound design for all three movements and the installation. I created the choreography in close collaboration with the dancer-performers and in relation to different places.

Other members of the creative team are costume designer Piia Rinne and also Heide Vanderieck (original costumes in movement II), light designer Luc Schaltin (movement II), environmental educator Riitta Nykänen (movement III) and production assistant Sofia Charifi. Cinematographers Pekka Uotila (movement I) and Arto Kaivanto (movement II) worked with Eija-Liisa Ahtila in recording the moving image used in the performances. The performance recordings were filmed by Ari Kauppila (movement I and III) and Teemu Kyytinen (movement II). I worked with video editor Heikki Kotsalo in making the audiovisual installation based on the live performances. I have collaborated with many of the artists before in my previous choreographic works.

Installation

In fall 2022 I agreed that the first artistic element will be pre-examined based on documentation. The reason was that the three part structure and schedule of the live performances of NU | I-III created a practical challenge for pre-examination. I have taken the “examination based on documentation” as a positive challenge and opportunity to continue the process of research in thinking how to (re)present a live site-responsive dance performance in another form. My aim has been to transmit as much as possible of the original work to another medium. On the other hand I have continued the iterative and creative process by taking freedom in editing the materials (visual, audio and text) and going further with the ideas I have on choreographic writing by applying those in composing the audiovisual installation. I have found that this is a process in which I can continue to experiment with how ecological poetics is articulated as we move from one form of communication to another.

As an extension to the installation, there will be two occasions on which dancer Sofia Simola will perform fragments of the choreography live and I will talk about the research-creation. Through live dance and speech, I intend to juxtapose the audiovisual representation of the work with embodied presence, to extend the form of sharing documentation and to disclose some of its challenges in relation to dance and choreographic practice.

Performances

Each of the three movements was situated in a different location in Helsinki: (I) Oil silo 468, a former oil silo turned into an outdoor event space, (II) Zodiak Stage, a black box theater located in Cable Factory -cultural complex and a former industrial site, (III) REDI -shopping mall in Kalasatama neighbourhood. Spatial dramaturgy is central to the whole work. In the macro structure black box theater becomes bookended by the oil silo and the shopping mall, squeezed between fossil-energy and consumption.

Each of the places provided a different environment to work and perform with in terms of material and technological conditions as well as historical meanings and social conventions. I experimented on the transformation of choreographic and performing strategies from one environment to another, and this took place in dialogue with scenography, sound, light and costumes. The theater and its stage became constructed in each movement in a different way, depending on surrounding architectural and environmental conditions. As a consequence also the relation between performers, audience members and the materials of the performances is dynamic and changing.

NU | I-III is related to and on certain parts continuation of my three previous choreographic works: Peltotie | Conversations (Zodiak, 2018), Katkelma | Passage (Runokuu, 2019) and Ikimetsä | Clearcut (Jyväskylän Summer Festival, 2021). From these works I have recycled materials, working methods, choreographic scores and approaches to performing. I have continued to experiment on and compose choreography in relation to certain objects and scenographic elements, as well as auditive material. Also the choice of locations and performative environments: oil silo, black box and shopping mall are coming from there. This has been a conscious choice to root the research concretely on my artistic practice and to see what is already there in relation to the subject of my research. I’ve been curious on circulation, transformation and adaptation on the level of the artistic process, and to look at these as paraphrase to ecological ones.

In pre-communication towards the audiences I framed the work by the following question: How do ecological poetics perform between dance, site and image? Sound can well be added to these, especially regarding the first and third movement. In the oil silo (I) sound was a major agent connecting the performing bodies, the enormous steel structure of the container and the moving image. Reverb and the specific acoustic conditions made the sound emitted by the performers to transform and continue living in the shared space. Dancers sounds fused with those created digitally and those coming from out side the silo, wind and the sea. Different bodies began to resonate with each other. In the shopping mall (III) audience could immerse in the old growth forrest through the field recordings and narration, while the sounds of the shopping mall and the customers passing by reminded of the actual commercial and technological environment.

In what follows, I will briefly describe each movement and location in order to share information that may not be directly apparent from the audiovisual presentation of the work, but is relevant for understanding the circumstances and context.

Movement I | Oil silo

Kruunuvuorenranta, Oct 30th & 31st 2022

Duration: 37 min

fracking corporeal sedimentations

soft geologies

embodied carbon cognition

ruptures informing perception

fossil architecture inscribed

excess shifting intensities

Oil Silo 468 where we performed the first movement in late October is basically a covered outdoor space. It was cold in temperature, between 4-8 celsius and wind was blowing from the sea on the first evening. The huge cylindric steel container, diameter 30 m and hight 16m, has holes on the walls. It is very solid structure and porous space at the same time. The inner walls and concrete floor is painted rust red. It’s a remanence of the old oil harbour of Helsinki, and a kind of fossil modern globe theater by its circular form.

Near by the seaside entrance I had placed an old sauna stove from my family cottage. The wood was burning inside it discreetly, but the scent of the smoke lingered everywhere in the empty silo. I mention this since it is impossible to perceive from the AV-installation, but in terms of content and multi-sensory composition it was an important element.

Ahtila used a two channel projection of moving image to create a tapestry of a forest burning on the inside wall of the silo. The major visual element covers more than one third of the wall. The dimensions of the silo, burning forest and dancing bodies all contrast each other in scale.

One sculptural element I chose to work with partly because of its materiality is dance mats rolled into tubes. The material is made of complex hydrocarbon compounds and is impossible to recycle and difficult to dispose of after use. Choreographer-researcher Simo Kellokumpu has researched the same object. A Dance Mat is a project included in the first artistic part of his doctoral dissertation Choreography as Reading Practice. (Kellokumpu, 2019). I came to know of this in a conversation with him after the performances took place. The staging and contextualisation differs, but there are also striking similarities in the relation between the object and performing bodies.

In this movement, I focused experimenting choreographically and bodily on the concept of energy and the material conditions of the site described above. The bigger framework is the massive and exponentially growing use of energy, fossil fuels particularly, since 1850s and its diverse consequences environmentally, culturally and especially in terms of corporeal experience. Central concepts have been excess, fracking, extraction, ruptures, fragmentation and ghosts.

Movement II | Black Box

Zodiak / Cable Factory, Ruoholahti, Nov 6th & 7th 2022

Duration: 45min loop, performed three times in a row, 15 minutes between the loops

bodies

something very

old

at play

The second movement took place on the Zodiak black box studio stage, situated in the cultural complex build in the premises of former cable factory. The stage was framed by two LED screens, moving image -sculptures representing a field road and change of seasons from late summer to mid winter. The sculptures were suggesting a region for the dance to take place in. A horizontal landscape for vertical memories. The choreographic structure created a loop of a 45 minutes that was repeated three times on both evenings. Recycling text, created and found during the process back into the performance as speech was something that was specific to this movement. I also worked with an object recycled form previous work, an emergency blanket to compose a hybrid sculpture of performer’s body and the blanket. This is structures a continuity with the sculptural use of dance mats in movement one. It also functions as a connecting agent between the visual material of the moving images and the bodies of the performers.

Movement III | Shopping Mall

REDI / Kalasatama, Nov 12th & 13th 2022

Duration: 47 min

A decaying tree is a kind of node between the dying and the living.

It’s where death becomes life again.

The third movement took place in the commercial-public space on the K1 floor of the Red shopping mall. Thematically this part is focused on the ecological processes, diversity and temporalities of an old-growth forest. Material listened by the audience with headphones is made of field recordings in Siikavaara protected forest, North-Eastern part of Finland. Environmental educator and nature guide Riitta Nykänen is the narrating voice. The audio was recycled from Ikimetsä | Clearcut (2021) and re-edited for this work. Boxes filled with freshly cut spruce trees, which served as a scenographic element and audience seating, brought the scent of coniferous forest into the space, which contributes to the intended spatial juxtaposition and contrast with the human-build commercial environment. Audience seating is positioned in the mids of the performance space creating a kind of clearcut with tree stumps left on place. The edges between the surrounding life of the shopping mall and the space created by the performance were one of my interests. Edges where different biotopes meet are the hotspots of diversity in old growth forests. Also in this cultural context same phenomena could be perceived. The dancers work was focused on mediating and crafting between the two opposite environments, the auditive-imaginative forest and the visual-actual-concrete shopping mall.

Choreographer | Editor

During the process of creating the first artistic element, my understanding of the nature of my choreographic practice and my tendency to act as an “editor-writer” has become clear. I prepare the ground, set the framework and conditions for writing, in the sense of creating material, to take place through collective embodied processes. Perceptions, ideas and materials often circulate from one artistic medium to another and back. By rewriting and recomposing the material produced, I create collages with poetic structures. Crafting in this way requires transitions between different media of experience and communication, be they image, sound, text or body movement. The poetics that emerge in the process are relational and often multi-layered, creating reciprocal connections between bodies, concepts, habitats and contexts. This is a way to cultivate a practical understanding of ecological poetics in my choreographic research.

List of Credits

Choreography: Veli Lehtovaara in collaboration with the performers

Performance: Matilda Aaltonen, Erik Eriksson, Kevin Fay, Elias Girod, Inga Huld Hákonardóttir, Anni Koskinen, Sofia Simola

Moving image and sculptures: Eija-Liisa Ahtila

Sound design: Jani Hietanen

Light design: Luc Schaltin (movement II), Anton Verho (original design for movement I, adaptation Anna Pöllänen)

Costume design: Piia Rinne (movements I and III, movement II adaptation & black fragments), Heide Vanderieck (movement II, original costumes)

Knitted hats and neck warmer: Anja Lehtovaara

Environmental educator: Riitta Nykänen (movement III)

Cinematography: Pekka Uotila (movement I), Arto Kaivanto (movement II)

Edit: Heikki Kotsalo (movement I, II and installation)

Performance recording: Ari Kauppila (movements I, III), Teemu Kyytinen (movement II)

Production assistant: Sofia Charifi

Alexander technique instruction: Soile Lahdenperä

TRE method instruction and voice coach: Maija Kaunismaa

Production: Entirely Moved | Kaikki Liikkuu ry., Veli Lehtovaara

Co-production: Moving in November, Zodiak -Center for New Dance, Institut finlandais

Production consultation: Arts Management Helsinki

Residencies: La Briqueterie CDCN Val-de-Marne (FR), wpZimmer (BE), BIT Teaterngarasjen (NO)

Supported by: Finnish Cultural Foundation, Arst Promotion Centre Finland, Dance House Helsinki / SPARKS, TelepArt / The Finnish Cultural Institute for the Benelux, The Performing Arts Research Center in Theater Academy, University of the Arts Helsinki

Thank you: Ilppo Pohjola | Crystal Eye, Pro Av Saarikko Oy, Eventgear Oy, Laatikkokauppa | Kirsi Pitkänen, Kauppakeskus REDI, Lauri Supponen, Peter Tapio, Osku Leinonen, Pirjo & Jaakko Lehtovaara, Joma Richter