Howl

In her fifth work, after the group piece Blab, full of peculiar textures in sculpting the associative, Sonja Jokiniemi goes back to a self performed solo. As always, a strong point is made in the interaction with objects on stage, inspired by her Eastern Finland roots: lichen, wood, clay, knife. Two big black and white drawings and some laced textiles hang from the ceiling. The audience is sitting around the performer.

In the previous works, Jokiniemi, developing a strong personal discourse around alternative languages and new materialism, was finding in those stage objects real play partners, encouraging the audience to consider their presence with the same intensity as human performers. In Howl, the constructive dialogue is for the first time failing: inability, frustration and fear seem to take the lead, allowing the performance artist to let progressively but fully go the civilized part of this human to object relationship, destroying the ideas of normality, civilization, canalized sexuality and constructed intelligence, leading the audience to a new pallet of sensitive, psychoanalytic and carnal questions about the ecosystem. Deeply moving, sexual, violent and sad, Howl is surely her most intimate work to date.

Read the evening programme of Howl created for MDT Stockholm.

Choreography, visual works and performance: Sonja Jokiniemi

Lighting and spatial design: Heikki Paasonen

Sound design and performance: Natalia Domínguez Rangel

Dramaturgical dialogue: Elina Minn

Performer in rehearsal: Maija Karhunen

Glass blowing: Kari Alakoski / Mafka & Alakoski Oy

Headdress: in collaboration with Valentin Silvennoinen

Producer: Riikka Thitz

Performance photos: Simo Karisalo

Supported by: Arts Centre BUDA, Arts Promotion Centre Finland, Kone Foundation, Samuel Huberin Taidesäätiö, The Finnish Cultural Foundation

Co-production: Be My Guest -network for emerging practices, Kiasma Theatre (FI), MDT Stockholm (SE), NEXT International Festival, STUK – A House for Dance, Image and Sound (Leuven, BE) in the framework of the Life Long Burning – Towards a sustainable Eco-System for Contemporary Dance in Europe project (2018-2022) supported by the Creative Europe programme of the European Union. 

Thank you: Daniéle Mussard and Filambule Arts Textiles, Lausanne (CH) 

Premiere on 8.8.2019 at Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, Helsinki (FI)