About
MASSIVENESS AND STILL LIFE is a choreographic spatial piece for 6 performers, a piano and selected non-human materials. The group posits questions about somatic movement on stage, deconstructing and reflecting on states that arise from the inter-relations between performers and from process of focusing observation on somatic layers of the body. By virtue of common denominators, attempts at staging open up to touch stories of support, safety and obliteration.
The performance has many points of departure, among the most important of them Donna Haraway’s ‘Companion Species’ (2008)[TS1] and Karen Barad’s ideas about agency in ‘Intra-action’ (2007).
On staging of the artistic process of creation: MASSIVENESS AND STILL LIFE is a generous immersion into the shared and the personal, wonderfully into something familiar and even dangerously strange, into shades of tenderness, boundlessness and situations of recognition that resemble contemplation.
Background
Original working group, concept (Järkäle ja asetelmia) Sara Gurevitsch, Elli Salo, Tom Lönnqvist, Alexander Salvesen, Anne Makkonen, Salla Rytövuori, Roope Gröndahl and Anton Vartiainen (as part of work completed in 2020).
Credits
Choreography, texsts: Sara Gurevitsch in collaboration with Jaakko Fagerberg, Vilma Mankonen, Anne Makkonen, Oona Pennanen, Nella Matleena Savolainen
Piano: Roope Gröndahl
Sound design: Tom Lönnqvist
Light design: Alexander Salvesen
Costumes: Sara Gurevitsch in collaboration with the working group
Spatial and video design: Tom Lönnqvist, Alexander Salvesen, Sara Gurevitsch
Residencies: Summer studios, ArTeZ Arnheim (2019), Vanhan kaivoksen residenssi Outokumpu (2020), kuudestila Mikkeli (2020, 2021), Theatre Academy Helsinki (spring – summer 2023)
Supported by: Arts Promotion Centre, Jenny and Antti Wihuri Foundation, kuudestila, Theatre Academy, Finnish Cultural Foundation SKR Uusimaa
Production: Riikka Thitz (productional support 2019), Kiasma Theatre, Sara Gurevitsch