Pancor Poetics unfolds as a choreographic installation and performance, where Pontus Pettersson’s performative Cat Practice intersects with a miniature golf course, all shaped by his own typeface, Pancor. This typeface serves as a poetic medium, blending visual, spatial and textual elements to explore poetry and choreographic inscriptures.
Pontus Pettersson’s Cat Practice is attuned to the cat’s wants and itches—bodily, cognitive, social, and choreographic, even energetic. Embodying the cat demands alertness, adaptation, and a constant shift of attention. The cat wanders and wails according to its desires, living much of its life out of sight yet strangely close to us. At its core, Pancor Poetics captures the essence of being a cat, rather than trying to portray it. Here, the cat is a verb, an act of doing. What comes as a gift is embodiment.
The joining and rearranging of chosen words envelop Pontus’ Cat Practice in written language, accidentally. Much like dancing, poetry has the ability to produce and alter meaning through minor shifts and ruptures. Dance and poetry share a constant interplay between structure and disorder, a balance of organization, chance, and error. Dance can write, and writing can dance. In Pancor Poetics, poetry is “spoken” on walls, floors, in bodies, as well as intimate tête-à-tête to members of the audience.
Expanding into a dynamic entity within the Kunsthalle exhibition space, this constantly evolving piece bridges multiple disciplines, engaging audiences of all ages, and inviting them into a realm where art and life converge on a journey of continuous discovery.
You are invited to stay, as long as you wish.
Pontus Pettersson is a Swedish choreographer, artist, dancer, and curator based in Stockholm. By applying choreographic principles to all of his works and projects, Pontus creates a variety of artistic expressions, ranging from large-scale installations and poetry to objects, Cat Practice, fortune telling and dance. It is a love for dancing with a particular interest in made and found objects that create and blur choreographies between subject and object, spectator and performer. Where hospitality and temporality can be seen as two major choreographic and artistic principles, as well as more open fields of study such as poetry and water.
Working professionally as a dancer since his graduation from the Danish National School of Contemporary Dance in Copenhagen 2007, Pontus embarked on a diverse and spread-out career working with world class choreographers such as Ohad Naharin, Deborah Hay and Mette Ingvartsen. He started making his own work early on and has continuously shifted between roles inside of the larger spectrum of dance, dancing, creating, organizing, writing and teaching. Among his latest work you find the musical accordion solo A Dog Called Drama, the choreographic installation Bodies of Water and his solo exhibition The egg the cat and the poem – were the surface tears.
Pontus is also the initiator and curator of the participatory, movement and publication-based platform Delta, alongside Izabella Borzecka, and a co-founder of the annual dance and performance festival My Wild Flag, together with Karina Sarkissova. Pontus holds two masters, one in choreography from Uniarts and one in visual arts at Konstfack.
Escarleth Romo Pozo performs and create dances. Born in Nicaragua, she has lived and danced in the UK, Belgium, Switzerland and is currently based between Stockholm and Copenhagen. Departing from metastable bodily states her work is a continuous revision of moments of resilience dealing with the elasticity between resistance and surrendering. She creates through states of loss and dissolution as recycled events placed in a circular sensation of time rather than a linear perception of history. She is particularly fascinated by the ever changing levels of resonance and dissonance of the intimate, the hidden and the invisible forces that bring us together or make us fall apart.
Robert Malmborg is a dancer & choreographer based in Stockholm. He graduated from the Royal Swedish Balletschool in 2006 and holds an MA in Choreography – New Performative Practices from SKH 2021-2023. His dancing technique and knowledge is also deeply informed by extensive training in Gaga, whilst dancing in Ensemble Batsheva (ISRL), and many years of training in different dance styles deriving from Street dance. As a dancer he has worked with, among others; Pontus Pettersson, Ohad Naharin, Adam Linder, Escarleth Pozo, Stina Nyberg, Andros Zins Browne, Lito Walkey, Bounce Street dance Company, Sharon Eyal & Gai Behar. Robert works with choreography, dance and voice. He is interested in the functionality of his crafts in regards to their current work situation. Approaching the working context as choreographic material and a source of meaning, with an impulse to put it into question.
Venue
Kunsthalle Helsinki, Nervanderinkatu 3, 00100 Helsinki
Time
07.11.2024 11.00-18.00
08.11.2024 11.00-18.00
09.11.2024 11.00-17.00
10.11.2024 11.00-17.00
Soup Talk 07.11. at 12
Tickets
11 € / 20 €
Duration: The installation is open throughout the opening hours of the museum.
Please note: Filming and taking pictures is allowed but please be respectful to the performers and fellow audience members.
Installation objects and choreography: Pontus Pettersson
Costume: Pontus Pettersson together with the performers
Dance and performance: Sofia Charifi, Anni Koskinen, Vilma Mankonen, Robert Malmborg, Pontus Pettersson, Escarleth Romo Pozo, Jaakko Toivonen.
Previously performed by and/or influential to the work: Sybrig Dokter, Robert Malmborg, Escarleth Romo Pozo, Ulrika Berg, Jim De Block, Louise Dahl, Madeleine Lindh, Aga Pędziwiatr, V Pierzyński, Tyra Wigg, Adam Seid Tahir, Ar Utke Acs, Peter Mills, Michelangelo Miccolis and nick von kleist
A special thank you to: Anna Grip and Cristina Caprioli
Photo: Nemo Hinders Stocklassa
In collaboration: Moving in November and Kunsthalle
Visit supported by: Helsinki Model, Svenska kulturfonden, Nordic culture point, The Swedish-Finnish Cultural Foundation, The Swedish Arts Grants Committee.