KAISA KUKKONEN - PORTFOLIO 2019

Radical acceptance of self and others


Looking back I am noticing Radical Acceptance to be the essence and anchor of both my existence and work for the last 10 years.

The seed for the development of my practice came to me while I was struggling with unhealthy judgements connected with the competitiveness in the dance scene. The moment of insight came to me when I stepped out of a performance one time because I didn’t want to perform to a specific person in the audience, and I wasn’t able to rejoin the performance because I was struggling with judgements and expectations of what and how a dancer should behave.

Suddenly it was clear as day to me: I want to create a space where it is possible for the performer and the audience to be present and listen to what each of us needs in the moment - even if it means leaving the space entirely.
I found my first set of tools in the physical presence that helped me deal with this environment in Contact Improvisation. I learned to connect with other people while still keeping my own boundaries, fulfilling my wish to be present.
This initial idea grew into my whole life and started informing aspects of not only my performance practice but also my work as a producer/teacher (which is about creating inclusive and nonjudgemental spaces) and my personal life.
Through interviews with visitors at the following performances I created, I collected evidence that this feeling of presence and freedom is clearly felt by all people that are participating, even the audience. It radiates outwards.

Improvisation as performance

For me in the practise of improvisation the most important thing is to be present. I am sharing all that is happening and appearing in the moment with all the people in the space. I am dealing with whatever comes up, those can be emotions, sensations, pleasant or not, judgements and thoughts and I aim to make them physical while not getting overwhelmed but bringing them into movement.

The friction of future and the past create the present. In improvisation the moments are very dense and loaded because of all the things that have led to this moment, thinking for example about all the touches that have ever happened in this space.

Through the practice of improvisation as performance I am working between the heaviness and the lightness of each moment, accepting myself and others. It’s political to allow yourself to be emphatic to yourself and others.

Consent and Feminism

The problem of performing is that you are expected to be in a situation that can be be very vulnerable. If you consented to perform you can’t revoke your consent, you have to do it. The tools that are used to survive the moment (when I don’t feel so well to perform) are usually helping to disengage from the moment and to even dissociate.

My approach to consent and feminism is very close to improvisation - it’s about accepting what is happening in each moment and being curious about it.

I wish to be creating work situations where you are allowed to be yourself and to really be in the moment, be present with everything that you have to offer.

That’s about safer performance spaces for the performers and the audience.

All of this comes down to
be true to what’s in the moment.

2 main projects:


Maybe I Lay on your Belly Forever

Diana Thielen, Kaisa Kukkonen

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This work is about feminism, contact improvisation, touch, aggression, tenderness and care. We develop physical tools for finding ones agency on stage and at workshops. This work I do in collaboration with dance maker, teacher and gender studies student Diana Thielen.



The scores we work with:
Let’s serve own needs, not serving the needs of the other.
Let’s follow only own curiosity to fulfill own excitement and/or pleasure.
Let’s aggress own decisions, not avoiding conflict, but staying within the trouble.
Violence as transformation.


We work on stage with the scores, changing the situation so that it always serves us and we wish the audience would do the same.
In the studio we are developing questions like how to be selfish without being abusive, how to turn abusive situations to something else and what is a conflict in a physical interaction. How do we relate to each other? We reflect our behavior on stage and in everyday life through scores, questions and feminist approach. How do we embody our gender and is it possible to queer it through physical interaction?
We are working with texts by Hannah Arendt, Donna Haraway, Erin Manning, Sarah Ahmed and Iris Marion Young and aim to queer the audience vision of two female-bodied persons in contact on stage. One feedback we got was that our performance is very queer without looking like one.

The performances have been 15-20 minutes long pieces where we move in space. We have kept the scores (the ones mentioned above) as a secret to the audience. The latest one (video) was in a residency with Shake it Collaborations and Tove Sahlin at Skeppsholmstudion in Stockholm in March 2019. We worked with a musician Josefin Runsteen.

We have used different strategies to involve the audience: giving them papers and pens to write, ask them to read out loud and giving them little exercises, at the performance at DansPlats Skog we talked about the performance in-between the two rounds of dancing.
Next version happens in Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma in Helsinki on the 12.4.2019 with 7 dancers and a harpist. There we are dance duets in installation-like setting and some of the performers have conversations with the audience members.

Full footage, filmed by Tully Doole:

Princensesses (of prisons, senses and princesses)


Our journey started from a Somatic Bootcamp. We met for the Contemplative Movement Practice (originally developed by Barbara Dilly) over a period of time in the beginning of year 2018. Contemplative Movement practice is a practice of non-definable movement, altered logic and meaning. It’s a score of 30 minutes sitting meditation, 30 minutes of movement for oneself and 30 minutes dancing together.

In front of an audience, the interest shifts into the play that messes with a direct interpretation and presumptions of aesthetics and looks. In the context of this performance, we are exploring how to stretch beyond the generic conclusions of how and under which circumstances one is allowed to sense and ambivalent aspects of how sensing is performed. We wish to challenge an idea that sense-practices are directly linked to a liberation of the self.

This performance was a very challenging situation for me as I was feeling very vulnerable because of something that had happened in my personal life. I decided still to go through the performance and see what happens, when I bring this vulnerability on stage. The work is about being with what is and it was very interesting to see how me and Gesa Piper dealt with that situation so differently. I was moving very little, going towards very small movements on my fingers and face and Gesa was moving around, talking, trying to make me move, using the space and going into a character. Out setting was very free, we had timing for the beginning meditation where we looked at each other to the eyes and after that we did 20 minutes of practice.

At the Museum of Impossible Forms (Mif) we performed at a evening called the Fierce Urgency of Now on the 9th of March 2018.
Full footage, filmed by Synes Elischka

7 examples of projects supporting my portfolio:

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TRIOT

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a trio of dance and sound improvisation. I have practiced and performed together with Heini Nukari, Elina Hauta-aho from 2017.

We share the curiosity to improvisation, composition and  empathy and we all have our own quirky ways to compose in the moment. Sometimes there is a song, something the song turns into a shout.






Full footage, filmed by Olli Niemitalo, edit Kaisa Kukkonen:

Fish-Go-Round

Fish-go-Round! was a live performance for electronic music, Radio Helsinki radiowaves, lights and dancers, tailored for the Lasipalatsi Square in Helsinki.

Music for the piece is composed by Shinji Kanki, who has created an experimental work where sounds of 40 different species of fish emerge from an ocean of white noise. I choreographed the piece for 30 dancers.

The live performance uses radiowaves from Radio Helsinki to trigger light devices on the square following the pitch of the music. A set of umbrellas fitted with led lights will be carried by a flock of dancers shoaling around the Lasipalatsi tower.

Tyhjän sykli (the cycle of emptiness)

Kaisa Kukkonen, Raisa Vennamo, Katariina Vähäkallio 2016

An improvised performance at Petkeljärvi National Park.
We used the score of composing with chapters. The claps mark the end and start of the chapters.


We work with the space and the nature. This performance experience was very freeing because I felt I can fully trust these two older women, I had the feeling there is nothing I can do wrong.

Blind Dance

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Gesa Piper, Kaisa Kukkonen, X dance – festival of Inclusive dance 2017, Helsinki

This was a one-to-one performance where we worked with movement, touch and sound to

Score for the audience:
Welcome to the Blind Dance
You will soon be picked up by Gesa and Kaisa who will accompany you on an experimental journey.

PART ONE (10min):
You will be guided through a public space.

PART TWO (5min):
We enter into an empty space. You can explore being blind-folded by following your own intentions. You can move, dance, explore the space, dance with the guide or do what you wish.

PART THREE (5min):
You, Gesa and Kaisa are equally surrendering into the course of action, to what happens or doesn’t. Any of you can be initiator and you all are responsible of what happens.

The transition from one part to another will be signalized with a bell-sound.

Gesa and Kaisa are taking care of the time, space and safety.

My Body is Not a Temple, it's an Amusement Park

My body is not a temple, it´s an amusement park is an experimental score for a dance jam and performance.

We brought the freedom of contact improvisation jam to a performance and worked a lot with the concept of being able to see the performance also from inside of it. 

We did few different scenarios, in the first ones the jams were separated and then they came more and more intertwined. 

"Join us in the instant composition score by dancing, watching or both. Bring your dancing clothes!"

Saa Sanoa

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Minna Heikinaho Doctoral project for Academy of Fine Arts of the University of The Arts Helsinki (Finland)

Minna Heikinaho asked three dancers (me, Iina Taijonlahti and Kardo Shiwan to be in the space of her exhibition and perform without performing for long durations of time. We spend 3-6 hours there dressed as homeless people, non-recognisable, 16.10.-6.11.2017.

We were allowed to use the materials like the newspapers and the sleeping bags for our research of presence. 






Observatoires

Observatoires is a research and performance project initiated by Liisa Pentti +Co. A group of Finnish dancers and dance makers work together with Lisa Nelson. The audience is invited to observe the work in Eskus, Suvilahti.

Lisa Nelson is a dance-maker, improvisational performer and collaborative artist who has been exploring the role of the senses in the performance and observation of movement since the early 70s. She performs, teaches and creates dances in diverse spaces on many continents, and maintains long-term collaborations with other artists, including Steve Paxton, Daniel Lepkoff, Cathy Weis, Scott Smith, and Image Lab—a Tuning Score performance ensemble. She has received several awards including an Alpert Award in the Arts 2002 and a Bessie NY Dance and Performance Award 1987. She lives in Vermont, USA.

 Free admission. The audience is welcome to come and observe, for any duration during the announced times.

A word about my practice as a producer

I worked as a producer 2014-2019 in m-cult, a media arts association in Helsinki. We realized a project as a part of an EU-project called Collaborative Arts Partnership Program (CAPP). In this project I organised 16 artist residency projects together with my colleague Minna Tarkka. My area of work was facilitation of collaboration between the artists and the community groups.

m-cult Media art residencies - in finnish
CAPP
email: kaisa.liisa.kukkonen@gmail.com

portfolio: kaisakukkonen.weebly.com


website: kaisakukkonen.wordpress.com
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