Dancing at the heart of empire: on the imperialist body and the choreography of compliance

- Your choreographer’s note talks about bodies at the imperial core and the imperial mode of living. Could you expand a bit on what these concepts mean, especially in the context of this work?

In the solo work Amalgam Melee (2024), I examined the contradiction of my mixed-Finnish body, its brownness and whiteness and the associated dynamics of power and violence in the Finnish context. In the work, these frictions play a double-edged role: they reveal both how the mechanisms of white supremacy shape and subjugate the mixed body and how the body accesses or participates in this mechanism of violence. Oppressor and oppressed at the same time.

In the second part of the series, Imperial Stage, I continue examining the socio-political status of the body in the dynamics of violence. The central question of the series is: who has a monopoly on determining what violence is? While Amalgam Melee focuses on the tension of the racialized body, in Imperial Stage I wanted to more deeply explore that same body’s perspective from its privileged position. Whiteness and socialisation in Finland are part of that perspective, but alone they are not enough to address the network of privileges that I want to examine. That's why I ended up focusing on imperialism and the imperialist body: to examine my body in the imperial core.

Imperial Stage examines the body in the imperial core—that is, the body that benefits from the global system, of which it is a part. The “imperial core” refers to the high-income core areas of the global economy (North America, Western Europe, Japan) that have historically built their well-being through a global transfer of value from the periphery to the core. Imperialism is the monopoly stage of capitalism. It is the control and dominance of the ruling states or capitalist core area over other regions and economies by political, economic, cultural and military means. In other words, it’s not necessarily direct conquest or colonial power but a broader system of denying peoples and states true sovereignty. The imperial mode of living, in turn, refers to the model of production, distribution, and consumption, as well as the associated “good life” discourses, that cause this system to be taken for granted as part of everyday life—in food, transport, energy, and identities. This is not a question of individual consumer choices. It’s about an infrastructure that has sunk into the Global North’s practices and bodies.

This parasitic system gives material privileges to bodies in the imperial core. Our welfare state is built on oppression and exploitation elsewhere. I’m interested in what kind of consciousness this material condition generates in my own imperialist body. How does the imperial mode of living shape my thoughts, desires, and ambitions—what I believe I am and what I think I deserve.

- In the English-language choreographer’s note, there’s an important sentence that was difficult for us to translate exactly into Finnish: “The choreography dives into the contradictions of the imperialist way of living, made invisible by design.” Could you tell us a bit more about this? Why is this issue at the very core of the work?

This “consciousness” of the imperialist body largely rests on invisibility: the system isn’t hidden by accident but instead produces itself as normal. The system normalizes global inequality and ecological destruction, making them seem to be private and everyday things. “Invisible by design” refers to the fact that the violence enabling and sustaining the system is built into it, and it is designed to remain invisible. At the heart of the work is the question: how can what is designed to be invisible be made visible by means of choreography?

The Finnish context is a concrete example of this: what we take for granted has been rendered invisible. As we reflect through the creative process on our imperialist body—that is, those of us socialized into Finnishness—we examine the process of socialization in Finnish society and the associated national identity project. I think that at the core of Finnishness is a strong compliance with the status quo, with preserving and upholding the existing order. This socialization already begins in school and is evident in the strong trust in, for example, the state, the police, and the education system. At the core of our values and our national brand are democracy, equality, civilization, quality, our relationship with nature, modesty, the importance of independence and political neutrality, and even peace. These sum up what we think and believe ourselves to be. We understand ourselves as a universal and neutral point of reference, one that is morally, intellectually, culturally, and socially superior.

These observations and analysis happened quite late in my personal process. I’ll give two examples. Before, I didn't think there was anything strange about how often Finland has a flag day. Later, I realized how nationalistic that is. For a long time, I also spent Independence Day following the splendor on TV with my family and friends, watching the elite celebrate at the President's reception, sipping a festive glass of glöggi as we admired and critiqued the fancy dress, as though we were part of that select group ourselves – and we are, in one way or another. A spectacle where our national identity crystallizes.

This socialization produces something in me that’s difficult to say out loud: I see our imperialist body as an apolitical, domesticated donkey wearing blinders, the last, useless generation, head in the clouds, cantering about in the meadows of a dying empire. In our blue-eyed naivety, we trumpet our support for democracy, equality, individual freedom and freedom of speech, while in truth we are deeply rotten and useless, clinging to liberal identities and individualism, steeped in double standards, and thoroughly morally corrupt. The stench of shit reeks from beneath our clean veneer. 

A concrete example of this was when President Stubb, drawing on his new book at the Future Global Power panel in New Delhi (link) described Western alliances as “holy” and “value-based” while those of the so-called Global South are “unholy” and “interest-based.” The panel moderator called out the racism of this framing and questioned what exactly is value-based in Western alliances. Aren’t they also based on interests—in this case, on “White people ganging up and exchanging nuclear devices with each other.” President Stubb lost his composure. 

In the course of this project, we have examined the historical violence and alliances that our nation-state is built on. Have we already forgotten who we allied ourselves with in World War II? And how does that violence continue into the present day—what kind of military alliances are we tied into? It’s clear that through NATO and the DCA (Defense Cooperation Agreement), Finland is ever more tightly bound into the US imperial war machine. Although Finland cultivates a narrative of being a small state with limited agency historically caught between great powers, I argue that it makes precisely the kind of political choices that further the goals it has set. Imperial Stage asks how this narrative is inscribed in the body: what kind of consciousness it produces, and what it makes us regard or disregard as violence. This is not just a theme but a central choreographic question: how to embody and stage what is designed to go unnoticed?

- Continuing from the previous question, can you already tell us what kinds of movement materials you have been working with? How are these themes dealt with on stage through choreography and dance?

We’ve been searching for methods to draw out, choreographically and bodily, as well as through sound, space, light, and costume design, the mechanisms of socialization, of the status quo, and of the violence bound up with them, and how these manifest in the relationship with the audience—how the audience becomes visible as part of the social fabric of the work. In Amalgam Melee, the question of violence and the tension it produces was very personal and subjective—racism and internalized racism are, above all, physical experiences—which the choreography expanded into a broader social framework. In the case of Imperial Stage, we found that we couldn’t approach embodiment in the same way, by starting from the body’s experience, because the privileged experience of our body in the imperial core isn’t felt in that same way emotionally, viscerally, or in the nervous system. This piece engages with privilege, the structure of the system, and the violence it enables by translating them into bodily tension through the choreographic process. 

In Imperial Stage, the analysis of the mixed-Finnish body’s position zooms out from the local context to a wider understanding of its place globally. In this global context, these intersectional identity markers lose their significance in a sense, since the question of class and its dynamics on a local and global scale now takes center stage. The Finnish personal identity number alone places us in a class position: members of a welfare state. Let me illustrate with a concrete example: if a black or brown US soldier takes part in the war against Iran, they are American first and foremost. It’s a different matter if the soldier opposes the war and refuses to be part of this war machine. When a body resists the system and gets branded a traitor, these markers of identity come back into play.

This military body ended up becoming the central movement material of the piece. We set out to examine the choreography of the body socialized into the prevailing system through the lens of the military body—not by representing it but by studying and rehearsing its nature, its quality of movement, rhythm, tonus, and dynamics. The precise isolation and defamiliarization of these elements gave rise to a performance practice in which, out of a certain minimalism of the body, its presence and its oppositional gaze (bell hooks), affect, images, and meanings tear loose in the tension of the space and begin to sway and shift. 

In the course of working through this, we’ve also been considering why choreography is expected to be “abstract” in order to be recognized as art (in a conception of art built on its “autonomy”), as if directness or literalness of expression do not meet the criteria of art. After Amalgam Melee, a colleague told me that dance isn’t the right form for addressing racism, because it cannot speak as clearly as theater or other speech-based forms of art. In their view, the power of dance lies precisely in abstraction. I see it differently. Choreography and dance are not only suitable but essential for working through the body’s political questions, because it is precisely through choreography and dance art  that we can open up something affective, jarring, and uncomfortable about embodiment—an in-betweenness that speech or other art forms can’t reach in the same way. And sometimes directness is necessary.

I’m especially interested in developing a choreographic logic and dramaturgy that doesn’t approach the body from the standpoint of the status quo or through the lens of the imperialist gaze but instead strives to reflect what is unpleasant within itself, rather than merely pointing at it from outside. The performers’ bodies invite asks to be seen and experienced in full truth: in gentle smiles, marching from stance to stance, crawling in ranks, and waltzing across the dance floor. The audience sits where it has always sat—watching, experiencing, evaluating, recognizing. But now the movement doesn’t settle for just being watched. It glides toward the viewer, stops too close, and asks: what do you see when you can’t look away?