Anne, A Book of Dances, which we are releasing today, is a collection of written choreographies by seven artists based in Finland and Sweden. Where did the idea and urge to realize this book project come from?
A Book of Dances emerged during the process of making Kyse on kaikesta – keskusteluja ajalta 3.9.2017-31.5.2019 (About everything – conversations during 3.9.2017-31.5.2019), which was a collection of email discussions over one and a half years with artists Rea-Liina Brunou, Minna-Kaisa Kallinen, Liina Kuittinen, and Sara Kovamäki. Our conversations focused on our ongoing practices, performances, and the everyday life and challenges we face as artists. While working on that book, I closely observed and engaged with how we artists navigate in our work and how the art market influences and choreographs the artists’ body.
During that time, I realized that much of the writing we produce as artists is motivated by market demands, often requiring us to explain, justify, or convince. However, I desired for a different kind of writing—one that is more fluid and rooted in the creative process itself. In About everything, we already wrote poetical, score-based, and other experimental texts, and I felt a need to give space in my next project to these kinds of writings—texts that unfold from and within the choreographic processes.
How did you pick the choreographers that you proposed to join into A Book of Dances?
The idea for A Book of Dances came to me first, and through that I realized with whom I wanted to share the space of this book. Some of the artists I have known personally for a long time, while others I know mainly through their artworks and artistic thinking. I have followed the work of these artists as an audience member and as a reader of their texts and published books. I was particularly interested in learning more about the work of Laura Cemin, Bambam Frost, Pontus Pettersson, Ofelia Jarl Ortega, Marika Peura, and Mikko Niemistö, and how they would use the space in this book. My background is in dance, choreography, and visual arts, so when considering which artists to invite, I looked at the content of their work but also, for those whose backgrounds connect with other art forms alongside dance and choreography, or who bring a dance perspective from contexts outside of traditional dance training.
How do you situate this book in relation to your choreographic practice, your work as a choreographer, and other of your writings? Additionally, how do you define the notion ‘expanded choreography’ in your work?
My choreographic practice focuses on the intimate and often messy aspects of human experience—affects, emotions, sensations, and thoughts as they move and shift within different situations and relations, and how the body accumulates and archives the knowledge over time. This interest extends to giving attention and recording experienced time, whether through the dance and movement or through writing that focuses around note-taking, diary reflections, and correspondence, including emails and messages. I explore situations drawn from both everyday life and the contexts of art.
With the A Book of Dances project, I continue to explore the relationship between the body and language, inviting these artists to engage with these themes through their own choreographic practices. My text Air talks in this book is based on a collection of written notes and voiced perceptions from the rehearsals of the upcoming performance Viiva – A Line, and I find it interesting to bring these two mediums—dance and writing—together. In my processes, they go hand in hand, though not without friction and pressure. I need both, as they each offer a different relationship to time, memory and imagination.
Writing manifests itself in different ways in my work: as scores for choreographic situations, as sources for speech or song, as in the performance and installation Carried by Invisible Bodies (2022), and as published books related to performances. I made a book About everything while simultaneously developing the performance how to _______ alone (2019). In collaboration with artist Maarit Bau Mustonen, we also made two artworks—Notes 1.4.–9.8.2020 and Ikkööhäi – I’m ok (2018)—which combined performance with a publication.
When defining the notion of “expanded choreography” in my work, I find myself a bit lost in theoretical concepts. One definition of expanded choreography that resonates with my work involves broadening or stretching the relationship between dance and choreography. For example, how non-human elements like air and air currents make us move, or imagining that the reader of A Book of Dances becomes a performer/dancer when reading the written choreographies, or examining how positions and power relations are choreographed/-ing our social situations. This stretching allows me to question traditional boundaries and contexts, presenting my work not only in dance and performance contexts but also in visual arts.