The fall season 2020 at Mad House Helsinki kicks off in August, as usual, at the Teurastamo district in Kalasatama. Our program opens with the premiere Ontto harmaa tanssi, which creates a space for a dialogue between poetry, language, and dance. The piece is a co-production with the Runokuu festival. Other premieres of the fall are Magnum and Mouthpiece, in addition to which the program includes visiting performances, performative installations, a LARP, workshops, and other events. We are also planning musical clubs, more info about those will follow later in the fall.
The coronavirus pandemic has affected also the Mad House, especially in the spring of 2020. The following performances were postponed from the spring to the fall: Layers solo improvisations, and Practices of Love and Body by the Prekaarit Praktiikat group. The fall program is not as tightly scheduled as usual, to allow for possible reorganization if need be.
The fall program is curated by Heidi Backström and Annika Tudeer. The technical and production team is Emmi Vainio, Annika Niskanen, and Viljami Lehtonen.
Tickets are sold in the fall at madhousehelsinki.fi/pages/
Changes in performance times and arrangements may occur.
Welcome to Mad House!
PROGRAM
19., 22. & 23.8. | Ontto harmaa tanssi | ENSI-ILTA
Ontto harmaa tanssi is a collaboration between choreographers Anna Mustonen and Veli Lehtovaara, poet Olli-Pekka Tennilä, sound designer Tatu Nenonen and light designer Topias Toppinen. The piece is constructed around the poems of Ontto harmaa (Poesia 2016) written by Tennilä. In collaboration with Runokuu festival.
3.-5.9. Relenting
Free entrance. 5.9 in English.
Relenting is a performance installation about parks and park life. The piece invites the spectator to think of the park as a place where nature is layered on top of public space. Romantic representations of nature, the relationship between place and landscape and the richness of species and beings are the central topics of the piece. The spectator is welcomed to be a part of a performative park where fragmented park living is intertwined with longer nature-culture continuums.
Working group: Milka Luhtaniemi, Venla Helenius, Sofia Palillo, Johannes Birlinger, Livia Schweizer, Aino Lintunen and Eve Lahikainen
8.-10.9. & workshop 12.9. | Layers
Layers is an evening with three solos, a dialogue between voice and movement. Pia Lindy and Heini Nukari, who are both experienced improvisers, started the Layers solo improvisation project in January 2015. The ongoing project developed into a form of solo improvisation practice. Pia and Heini have invited the performing artist Annika Tudeer to work with them on solo voice improvisation.
In the workshop (12.9) the working group shares their practices with the participants. The workshop is open for all.
Viikoilla 39, 48 ja 50 | Practices of Love and Body 1-3
Exact dates TBA. Free entrance.
Practices of Love and Body is a series of events in which the working group shares their artistic work through discussion, experimentation and listening. The events are based on the artistic practices of the members of the group. The event invites you as a participant to watch and to hear, to be heard if you wish, or to just spend time, drink coffee, think and put aside your everyday pressures.
Working group: Elias Girod, Ella-Noora Koikkalainen, Sanni Kriikku, Pie Kär, Taru Koski, Jan Nyberg, Anne Rönkkö, Tuuli Vahtola, Vanessa Virta ja Soile Voima.
1.-3.10. | Walrus Vampire Show
On the verge of absolute extinction, the presumably agender Vampire Walrus has been forced to leave the melting icecaps of the North Pole, and now supports itself as a performance artist in Central Europe. Vampire Walrus instructs people in the wonders of humanity. Amidst drinking blood and fits of possession the audience are taught, for example, recent European history, and basic tricks of the artist’s trade. The performance combines different genres of living art; contemporary theatre, standup comedy, Butoh dance, slapstick comedy, performance art, and storytelling create a macabre and surprising mixture. The performance adopts an anarchistic and ironic stance to various phenomena of our time, and a multifaceted and physical mode of performing.
Written, directed, and performed by Pasi Mäkelä.
9.-10.10. | The Story of Leaving
The performance, by Karolina Kucia, is based on mass vegetable production in Southern Europe and its' relationship to Central/Northern Europe and Northern Africa. The performance portrays three interrelated forms of production, three collectivities at work: the "sea of plastic" - a greenhouse area in Almeria, in Spain; the nearby Spanish Hollywood and film set of "Exodus"; then finally this performance itself. Tomatoes, the only ones who travel through all the places, tell the story. The piece grows out of a collection of stories of inadequacy, unease and hypocrisy in the labor structure.
Karolina Kucia is an interdisciplinary artist, based in Helsinki.
16.-17.10. | Mound
Mound explores affinity, touch, proximity, and distance as embodied experiences. The working group approaches the project by examining the fluidity and friction pertaining to coming together. It poses the question, how can we live and be together, accepting our similarities and differences as equally important modes of being and interacting.
Working group: Hanna Ahti, Maija Mustonen, Jaakko Pietiläinen, Masi Tiitta ja Riikka Thitz
27., 29., 31.10 & 1.11. | Mouthpiece | PREMIERE
Mouthpiece - a performance for six mouths - a piece which combines contemporary dance and music, features three wind instruments, two dancers, and one composer. Since the spring 2019, the working group has explored different forms of communication of the mouth, and social consctructions associated with it, while studying the boundary between the public and the private mouth.
Working group: Lauri Supponen, Linda Martikainen, Elias Girod, Kaisa Kortelainen, Joonatan Rautiola, Saku Mattila, Amita Kilumanga, Johannes Vartola
14., 17., 19.-21.11. | Magnum | PREMIERE
Magnum explores desire, sexuality, corporality, identity, hiding places, art and sports in the era of late capitalism. Magnum is a living arts comedy, striving for a catatonic state of ecstasy by juxtaposing the imagery from popular culture and its abundance with the restrained slowness of installation art.
Working group: Otto Sandqvist, Ole Øwre, Saga Sarkola, Klara Wenner Tångring, Luca Sirviö, Tom Lönnqvist ja Teo Paaer
3. & 5.12. | Deep Time Trancestors
Deep Time Transcestors -larp is a speculative fiction about evolution. The game opens up a multidimensional time-space continuum, in which players can explore how it feels to embody their trans ancestors’ bodies in this time. The players travel through the queer prehistory through somatic and fictive exercises. The aim for the players is to embody the fundamental queerness of evolution, and display the source of life as trans and non-binary.
The game is open for transgender, non-binary, and genderqueer players. The registration for the game starts in September. Languages: Finnish and English.
Working group: Ana Teo Ala-Ruona, Elina Minn, Pihla Lehtinen, Satu Kankkonen, Alvi Haapamäki, Camille Auer, Eeti Piiroinen, Emil Santtu Uuttu, Riikka Thitz
16.12. | A Human Ensemble
A Human Ensemble is ten simultaneous solos and a weave of psycho-corporeal formulations that emerge from the group’s collective preconscious.
Karolina Ginman, a dancer-choreographer, pedagogue and soon-to-be psychologist, has researched the suggestion for a reformulation of free association for the body since 2016. Within the context of A Human Ensemble she shares this suggestion with ten human beings, all from different backgrounds, tempting ten simultaneous reflections in inevitable relation to one another and engaging in an undefinable range of dynamics, energies, volumes, efforts, tempos and affects to be articulated simultaneously in space.
The appr. 45 minutes performance/demo of the ensemble will be followed by a discussion open to the public.
The event is a co-production with Pixelache Festival #Burn__2020.
Perfomers: Ingrid André, Sonja Elonen, Saija Lehtola, Marlon Moilanen, Jan Nyberg, Leila Kourkia, Gesa Piper, Pihla Sudenyö, Inari Virmakoski, Minja Yletyinen
Postponed until 2021 | BAD HOUSE -festival
International living art festival BAD HOUSE will be held for the first time in April 2021.
Photo: Venla Helenius / Tyyntyminen
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