Choreographic Convention
This year Moving in November hosts the closure meeting of the European network Life Long Burning – Futures Lost and Found (LLB3). Network partners—colleagues and artists come up to Helsinki to conclude and evaluate 4 years of working, thinking, and collaborating together. At the same time, we are hosting one of the long-standing formats of this network: Choreographic Convention. It is thought as a platform/symposium addressing current issues of the dance field as well as the field’s place in society today.
The Broken Cake: Quiet Tones, Soft Sounds
The Choreographic Convention in Helsinki takes the format of different parcours (French for route, path, or journey) and addresses not only dance professionals but is made for everyone interested.
Throughout the day, you will move in groups, witness and take part in artistic interventions, performative gestures, etudes, spaces of research and reflection, choreographic encounters, performances, workshops – from short, over one-to-one, to long-durational formats.
While moving from one place to the other in your group, you will have the time to get to know each other, be in conversation and reflect on what you have seen and experienced. All of the parcours will be different, each group will have their own dramaturgy throughout the day.
For this special occasion, we have invited artist living and working in Helsinki with whom the festival has a connection and a history. The invitation was deliberately formulated very openly, asking about the state of choreography in Helsinki and Finland.
The invitation also addressed the festival’s 40th anniversary and the current funding cuts Moving in November is suffering from, alongside the entire art field. It opened a reflection on what it means to celebrate such an occasion, what round anniversaries represent and for whom, and what happens when a festival postpones its birthday celebration until the conditions for celebrating it properly are in place. These reflections turn towards the celebratory, the failed celebration, and dramaturgies that are not built on climax or spectacle.
Listening into the proposals that the invited artists have made – quiet tones, soft sounds – notions of sensing, dwelling, reflection, contemplation, and rest come through – but also absurd celebrations, pleasure, playfulness, and the fading spectacular.
We specifically invited to this day: Chen Amor Nadler & Kadence Luella Neill, Esete Sutinen, Jana Unmüssig, Lydia Touliatou, Maija Hirvanen, Maija Mustonen & Satu Herrala & Anna Karhu Cormier, Mikko Niemistö, Sara Grotenfelt, Suvi Kemppainen, and Vincent Roumagnac.
We also invited students through two local university programmes at Uniarts Helsinki that collaborate closely with the festival, and whose students are currently in dialogue and exchange with students from other European art universities: LAPS (Live Art and Performance Studies), represented by Monia Penttinen and Vivian WONG Wing Lam, who are working with Elena Faki and Saeed Asadsangabi from HZT in Berlin, and the MA Programme in Choreography, which is hosting this year’s gathering of the Nordic Choreographic Platform (NCP), bringing together MA choreography students from Helsinki, Copenhagen, Oslo, and Stockholm.
Most of the made proposals are specifically created, sometimes first steps, for the day of the Choreographic Convention, presented mainly in seminar rooms and rehearsal/workspaces—anchored in the different practices and artistic universes of the invited artists and students.
We will start the day together with a Soup Talk Panel discussion with choreographer Michael Turinsky, researcher Riina Hannuksela and another guest still to be confirmed, addressing subjects from Precarious Moves by Michael Turinsky, presented on Saturday 14th and Sunday 15th.
Into the parcours we included works by Milla Koistinen and Matilda Aaltonen, performances already present in this year’s Moving in November programme.
The day will be fading out in Mad House and Reality Research Center with broken (iteration III – for Helsinki), a swan song, a funeral, song a last song, a goodbye song by Iver Findlay and Marit Sandsmark, artist friends and colleagues from Stavanger.
We warmly invite you to this special day to follow a parcours of your choice. You can already buy your day ticket now and secure your spot. The schedule for the day and more information about the different parcours will be announced soon.
One last thought: Lydia Touliatou, one of the invited artists, said in a conversation that she imagines the festival as a 40-year-old—an age that also carries the myth of climax with it. In the same conversation she said, that in Greece the saying goes that celebration keeps evil away. So let’s make some noise for choreography!
Yours,
Kerstin Schroth & the Moving in November festival team