seliseli
dance perfromance premiered at KokoTeatteri, November 2024
photos by Karoliina Korvuo
seliseli is a dystopian dance performance about public speaking. In the performance three dancers, twelve microphone stands and one instrument dive into the embodied, emotional, and visceral dimensions of the public political realm. Speeches, ceremonies and choreographies designed to convince people and attain power are interrogated through dance, object interaction and the expressive possibilities of the experimental instrument Ginette.
The working process of seliseli has been propelled by the question, of how to address speaking through dance, visually suggestive compositions, and sound without the use of human voice. The work seeks to highlight the multisensorial, bodily nature of producing and witnessing speech. seliseli builds upon the thought that the convincing power of political figures stems from something more emotional and affectual than logical arguments or facts. The performers challenge the patriarchal demand for rational and calm performance by exploring embodiment from a queer and trans perspective.
choreography: Emmi Pennanen and dancers, dance: Jenna Broas, Riku Lehtopolku, Emmi Pennanen, sound design: Petteri Mäkiniemi, costumedesign: Pauliina Sjöberg, lightconsultation: Pietari Salmi, dramaturgical advise: Anna Kozonina, graphic design: Anna Nurmela
Supported by Arts Promotion Centre Finland, City of Helsinki, Finnish Cultural Foundation, Jenny and Antti Wihuri Foundation
Produced in collaboration with KokoTeatteri
Excluded Middle
performance premiered at *intent: practice, research, and togetherness* –festival at HIAP, Suomenlinna, September 2024
photos by Nikita Gavrilenko
Excluded Middle is a solo performance dealing with the mathematical notion of infinity. A fictional character narrates a poetic story based on a philosophical dispute between mathematicians of the early 20th century. The performance draws from science fiction, biblical appearances of angels or demons as messengers, and pseudoscientific concepts such as astral projections and Descartes daemon. Through glitchy lip-syncing, dance, object manipulation and an increasingly dispersing soundscape Excluded Middle seeks to destabilize the notion of binary logics as superior in mathematics and by extension any analytic inquiry.
Supported by Jenny and Antti Wihuri Foundation
Maiseman muotokuva
installation as part of a group exhibition at Näsi Mansion in Porvoo, November 2023
third photo by Lea Maria Wittich
Maiseman muotokuva (portrait of landscape) is a performative installation made site-specifically for the exhibition space at Näsi Mansion in Porvoo. The work is inspired by Elvia Wilks’ essay Death by Landscape. Wilk explores feminist resistance through passivity and becoming vegetation. With the help science fiction stories in which women become part of landscape, turn into a tree or plant themselves into a pot as a form of overcoming and escaping from oppressive circumstances. In the installation paper made out of economics notes, and materials foraged from the surroundings of the mansion as well as water from the river become the pulp for a papercast drying on the performers body. The paperwork was accompanied with a dance practice seeking iprint the dimesions of the room onto the body and to merge with the room.
Luolavertaus
MA-thesis exhibition at Asbestos Art Space -gallery in Helsinki, March 2023
photos by Anni Koponen
The installation Luolavertaus explored the embodied nature of abstract spatial reasoning. The aim of the artistic working process has been to intertwine dance and mathematics through their possibilities in spatial fantasizing. In the installation hyperbolic paper counters the Euclidean structures of the room, and a human-camera-cyborg is caught dancing on a screen.
For this installation I worked with metaphors relating to different mathematical ways of understanding space through choreography, video work and material exploration. Everyday materials such as screens, sheets and paper act as windows into a meshing of space and surface, or get uncommon forms. How do our encounters with these materials shape our experience and pathways of thought?
gallery website
Ghost Town
crossartistic performance premiered at Cirko, Helsinki, March 2022
Collaboration with Makeshift Company and Agit Cirk
photos by Minja Kaukoniemi
Life’s repeating patterns become untethered as the end approaches, but can we escape by breaking out of the loop? Or should we follow the road to its natural conclusion?
Taking the audience on a journey from a broken-down car in the middle of the desert to an unexpected climax, Ghost Town combines circus, dance, media art and live foley, with world renown collaborators
concept and direction: Emma Lister, concept and circus: Sakari Männistö, dance: Emmi Pennanen, foley: Heikki Kossi, media art: Aku Meriläinen
more about the performance
review:
”Emma Listerin ja Männistön suunnittelema ja yhdessä Pennasen, Kossin ja Meriläisen kanssa ohjaama Ghost Town on esitys, joka jättää jäljen. Millainen jälki on, riippuu siitä, mikä kullekin esityksestä nousee keskeisimmäksi. Vaikuttava ja ajatuksia herättävä se joka tapauksessa on, mutta ei synkkä eikä toivoton.”
”Itse tanssista vastasi matkaa tekevän parin toinen osapuoli, tanssija Emmi Pennanen. Hänen liikekielensä oli sekä orgaanisen pehmeää että tarkasti aksentoitua. Hänen ja Männistön duetoissa jongleeraus ja tanssi kirjaimellisesti kietoutuivat tiiviisti toisiinsa.”
- Annikki Alku, Demokraatti, 18.3.2022
Vieras
mini perfromance premiered at Kehä-festival in Oulu, November 2019
photos by Eeva Suorlahti
Vieras is a perfromance for one audience member. It explores the fear of not understanding. The perfromance happends in a closed room where only one audience member at a time can enter. The intimacy and privacy of the performance allow for a unique dialogue in which both parties took turns in observing and being observed. My choreographic departure point for this piece was to create a movement-based language; a danced code or a set of rules for improvisation with the special feature of every motion having a verbal meaning. Consequently movement sequences form sentences and dance generates ’speech’. Although the dance appears abstract to an outside observer, it bears the rhythm of talking and has a direct meaning from the dancers’ point of view.
choreography and performance: Emmi Pennanen, costume: Eeva Suorlahti, sound design: Petteri Mäkiniemi
Tekstiili18 -exhibition, video
short dance video shown at Tekstiili18 -exhibition at the Cable Factory, Turbiinisali, Helsinki, May 2018
Collaboration with Aalto Textiles for Tekstiili18 -exhibition
photo by Eeva Suorlahti
This video is the result of an exploration around movement and textile, dwelling in a dramatic light and velvety darkness. In this realm, we observe how movement, light and material interact with one another, and how repetitive motion turns into an expression of stillness. A living textile draws waves into light and resists air. Motion and stillness are interwoven; one emanates amidst the other, creating a sense, not of duality but of wholeness.
- Eeva Suorlahti and Emmi Pennanen
concept and curation: Maarit Salolainen, direction: Eeva Suorlahti, choreography and dance: Emmi Pennanen
link to video
full video starts at 00:36