A Book of Dances is a collection of written choreographies by Finnish-based artists Anne Naukkarinen, Laura Cemin, Mikko Niemistö, and Marika Peura, and Swedish-based artists BamBam Frost, Ofelia Jarl Ortega, and Pontus Pettersson. The book is initiated and edited by choreographer, performer, and visual artist Anne Naukkarinen, and compiles some of the current thinking amongst their peers within expanded choreography.
A Book of Dances brings attention to the contradictions, translations, and intimate relationships between dance and language, as well as drawing lines between the etymological roots of the word ‘choreography’: khoreia, which refers to “dancing together”, and graphia, which signifies “writing”. A Book of Dances explores language as a writing-based approach to choreographic practice. The languages often used in choreographic processes are instructions, scores, reflections, casual conversations, and collective and subjective fantasies. These tools become ways to create a common ground that is never fully graspable, guiding our understanding, interpretation, and expression of internal and external realities. The resulting performed choreographies might not use language in their enactment, but the common ground of multiple languages lingers, affecting the performing bodies.
In A Book of Dances, multiple languages are intertwined with the situated knowledge and histories of the participating artists, each embedded within specific social contexts. The book’s aim is not to define choreographic practices as such, but to create a space for writing that engages with and embodies diverse perspectives on world-making. Thus, the process of meaning-making becomes situated, relational, and unstable—it shifts constantly.
The book launch takes place at Moving in November, where the artist-contributors will gather for a facilitated discussion.
Anne Naukkarinen (b.1987) is a Helsinki-based choreographer, performer, and visual artist. In her practice she focuses on intimate and messy human experiences: affects, emotions, sensations, and thoughts that are in motion in relation to situations. She uses methods from dance and somatic practices, as well as experimental writing—such as note-making—to delve into these elements. Her works mediate and are attentive to the poetic, social, and ecological aspects and structures of making art, and locate themselves in the intersections of contemporary dance, visual art, and the expanded field of choreography. Her recent works have been presented at Titanik Gallery, MAA-Tila Project Space, Kunsthalle Seinäjoki, Mad House Helsinki, Kunsthalle Helsinki, and Contemporary Art Space Kutomo. Naukkarinen is also a curator at the Performance art venue Mad House Helsinki.
Laura Cemin (b. 1992) is an Italian visual artist and choreographer based in Helsinki. Her work delves into the choreographic power of language, examining how language influences movement and physical interactions. In addition to her artistic practice as an author, Laura works as a dance dramaturg and guest lecturer at various international institutions.
BamBam Frost (b 1987) is a performer, choreographer and visual artist based in Stockholm. She moves through different contexts and artistic materials, but often returns to playing with the thought of bodies as carriers of historical, contemporary and speculative future events that she through fictional ideas can manipulate. Her recent work has been shown at Dansens Hus Stockholm, MDT Stockholm, Dansens Hus Oslo, Dansehallerne Copenhagen, Arsenic Lausanne, Festival Parallelle Marseille, Inkonst Malmö, Kaaitheatre Brussels, Tanzquartier Vienna, the Modern Museum in Stockholm and others.
Ofelia Jarl Ortega (b. 1990) is a Chilean-Swedish choreographer and performer based in Stockholm. Her work centres around vulnerability and femininity, often with a suggestive erotic aesthetic. Questions around power and group dynamics are at the core of her investigations. Her work has been presented both nationally and internationally since 2015, at venues such as ImPulsTanz, Vienna; MDT, Stockholm; Arsenic – Lausanne and Moving in November, Helsinki.
Pontus Pettersson (b. 1983) is a visual artist, dancer, curator, and choreographer based in Stockholm, who works at the intersections of contemporary dance, the expanded field of choreography, and visual art. His practice spans installation, poetry, and fountains, to object-making, festivals, cat practicing, and dancing. He is a choreographer deeply invested in material things, and a painter of fleeting moments.
Mikko Niemistö (b. 1984) is a choreographer from Helsinki whose work explores the formulation of the self through silent knowledge and the accumulation of bodily memories. Niemistö’s interests lie in the shattered realities of contemporary culture, and the things that linger in the background, like noise and the flow of consciousness. He currently focuses on the shadow zones of everyday reality, like dreams, psychedelia, and the supernatural. His works have been shown recently at Moving in November, Helsinki, ImPulsTanz, Vienna, Zodiak – The Center for New Dance, Helsinkiand Inkonst, Malmö.
Marika Peura (b. 1987) is a choreographer, dancer, and performer based in Helsinki. She works in multidisciplinary ways in the fields of dance and performance. Peura is interested in the emotional, poetic, and political nature that unfolds from the experientiality of the body. Her ongoing practice is centred around the intimacy of the dancing body; it dwells in emotional, sensual, and social energies at the intersections of club/rave dance and culture, and contemporary choreography.
A Book of Dances is published by Moving in November and Teatterin Uusi Alku kirjasto T/U/A (Theater’s New Base Library).
T/U/A is a publishing company that publishes performance texts, plays seeking new forms, choreography annotations, essays focusing on performing arts, and other kinds of texts related to and from the stage in Finland and abroad. T/U/A is based on the desire to create an actor in the Finnish publishing industry that increases the reading of performing arts’ texts, and generates (performing arts) discussions.