canary

source:danceinfofi
A performance about hypersensitivity.
Canary (Finnish: kanarialintu) is a bodily fantasy about hypersensitivity. The title alludes to birds that coal miners took down with them to serve as an indicator of the level of toxity in the air. When the bird died, the mine was deemed dangerous for humans as well. In the performance, the bird is replaced by hypersensitive human bodies that celebrate imperfection and confusion.

Performance is part of performance_now concept by Kiasma Theatre, with the theme of space this year.

Canary is a Double Bill with The Space by Liisa Pentti +Co.

Working group:
Miki Brunou, Kaisa Iho, Mira Kautto, Karolina Kraczkowska, Stephen Moynihan, Jenni Pystynen & Janina Rajakangas

Tickets: single performance 15/12e , double bill 20/15e
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source:danceinfofi
Canary is an embodied imagination of oversensitivity. The name of the piece relates to the sensitive birds, which were taken to coal mines to measure the toxicity of the air. When the bird died, the mine was dangerous for humans as well. In Canary the place of the birds is taken by oversensitive human bodies, celebrating imperfection and mayhem.

In our contemporary everyday environment there are lots of factors, that cause both health hazards and indisposition for large numbers of individuals. There is no clear divide where ‘ordinary’ symptoms to ‘ordinary’ stimulus of the living environment end and become oversensitivity.
– Mould Refugees Association

The oversensitivity is related to space, the sounds, smells, light, air and toxins of the space. What happens when the space can no longer be inhabited? Canary models the hypersensitive person of the future by embodying the overloading of senses. We are suggesting a future, where people survive, but change radically. We are choreographing the symptoms of living in toxic places until the breakage surfaces and the person becomes an other, a hybrid.
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The Janina Rajakangas Project involves a changing group of people that are invited to take part in each individual project with Rajakangas herself mainly working as choreographer and director. Also a performer, teacher, public thinker and discussion moderator, Rajakangas uses her work to ask us the existential questions of how do we operate in the world as emotional beings and what is our political responsibility. After completing her master’s in choreography at the Theatre Academy in 2010, Rajakangas followed with Last Dance Before the End of the World (2011), Of Family and Deer (2014), Dinosaur (2015) and Teen (2017). In 2017, she also collaborated on Tanhu, a Nollapiste collective production, and Homage 1, an artistic thesis of Theatre Academy dance students. As choreographer and movement co-director, Rajakangas’s credits also extend to dramatic theatre, where she has collaborated on the plays The Phantom of Normality (2016) and Kim, Lekki & Namwaan (2017), both authored by Saara Turunen, and the European productions of Leviathan (2012) and Torrents of Rapture (2014). Before her choreography studies, Rajakangas received a bachelor’s degree in dance in London, and has performed for Frauke Requardt, Requardt & Rosenberg, Smallpetitklein, Lisa Torun, Iztok Kovač / En-Knap and Robert Clark among others. She is one of the founders of the Esitysradio audio project, a podcaster and a writer, and also a board member of the organizations Tanssille and Liikekieli.com.

Miki Brunou is a sound designer and composer working primarily in film and theatre productions. He is interested in exploring the musical possibilities of random everyday sounds, as well as in the recontextualization and digital deconstruction of the audiovisual narratives produced by mainstream media. Brunou’s musical quest began in unconventional pop groups, with genre-bending experiments resulting in an aesthetic of contrasts and a chance combination of sounds. Brunou is an accomplished theatre and film composer, whose credits include the documentary films Netizen Mo (Helsinki-filmi 2016) and Between Rings (Helmi Films 2014). His works have been performed at film festivals around the world.

In her work, Jenni Pystynen creates powerful images and associations with the use of light. After her studies in lighting design at the Tampere University of Applied Sciences and the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Pystynen has forged an extensive career as a lighting designer in performing arts, architecture and new media art projects. Her most recent credits include Sonja Jokiniemi’s RRRRR in Bern, Switzerland, and at Kiasma Museum, Helsinki, and Janina Rajakangas’s Teen at Zodiak – Center for New Dance.

Mira Kautto, Karolina Kraczkowska and Fred Gehrig are dance artists trained in London and working in international productions.

Kaisa Iho studies dance at Kallio Upper Secondary School in Helsinki and at the Helsinki Dance Institute. She performs in the Janina Rajakangas Project production Teen.

Choreography: Janina Rajakangas
Dance: Fred Gehrig, Kaisa Iho, Mira Kautto and Karolina Kraczkowska
Sound design: Miki Brunou
Lighting design: Jenni Pystynen
Costume design: Janina Rajakangas and Jenni Pystynen

Duration: 50 min

www.tanssivirtaa.net
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source:kiasmafi
In our contemporary everyday environment there are lots of factors, that cause both health hazards and indisposition for large numbers of individuals. There is no clear divide where ”ordinary” symptoms to ”ordinary” stimulus of the living environment end and become oversensitivity. Mould Refugees Association

Canary is an embodied imagination of oversensitivity. It is performed on the second floor balcony in Kiasma for thirty people at a time. The name of the piece relates to the sensitive birds, that were taken to coal mines to measure the toxity of the air. When the bird died, the mine was dangerous for humans as well. In Canary the place of the birds is taken by oversensitive human bodies, that celebrate imperfection and mayhem.

In Canary the oversensitivity is related to space, the sounds, smells, light, air and toxins of the space. What happens when the space can no longer be inhabited? Canary models the hypersensitive person of the future by embodying the overloading of senses. We are suggesting a future, where people survive, but change radically. We are choreographing the symptoms of living in toxic places until the breakage surfaces and the person becomes an other, a hybrid.

Janina Rajakangas (s. 1978) is a Finnish choreographer who has studied i.a. at London Contemporary Dance School and Theatre Academy in Helsinki. Rajakangas has been working both in Finland and abroad. Rajakangas on työskennellyt sekä Suomessa että ulkomailla. The videos from her recent works can be viewed from here.

Performance is part of performance_now concept by Kiasma Theatre, with the theme of space this year.

Working group
Direction: Janina Rajakangas
Performers and choreographic thinkers: Fred Gehrig (DE), Kaisa Iho, Mira Kautto & Karolina Kraczkowska (PL)
Sound design: Miki Brunou
Light and spatial design: Jenni Pystynen
Production: Janina Rajakangas Projekti, Kiasma-teatteri

Supporters
Supported by SKR, Taiteen edistämiskeskus, Dansarena Nord, Nordic Mobility Fund, The Place & Ehkä-tuotanto.

The performance has been created during two years at residencies in Portugal (o espaço do tempo), Norway (Dansarena Nord Hammerfest), Turku (Kutomo) and London (Choreodrome, The Place).