Liisa Risu, Mirva Mäkinen, Sonja Jokiniemi: Music+

Music+ is a collage-style performance for 12 dancers, objects and space by three creators who aim to create a multi-voiced coming together motivated by curiosity.

On the macro level, Music+ is simple and graphic, yet its micro levels are complex and organic. It resembles a forest growing inside geometric architecture. Music+ is the playing of an instrument ­– and that instrument is spacetime.

The scale of the production, choreographed by Liisa Risu and Mirva Mäkinen, is exceptionally large in the field of Finnish contemporary dance. The third creator, Sonja Jokiniemi, is engaged in the process in the role of a visual choreographer. The workgroup also includes sound artist Jussi Saivo, lighting designer Jukka Huitila and no less than 12 dancers of different ages and generations.

The artistic process of Music+ focuses on music and sound as a sensory and spatial experiences. It explores the potential of dance and choreographic systems as sound sculptures through tactics based on a sensory equivalence between sound, image and motion.

Although the form is that of a collage instead of a traditional ensemble piece, the makers have found a shared source of inspiration in the words "haunted air". The collage-like structure of the piece enables otherwise incongruous materials to coexist in the performance.

Mirva Mäkinen's starting point in the process was the physical and experiential quality of motion based on touch and improvisation, while Liisa Risu deconstructs the three systemic structures from a previous work for new analysis and Sonja Jokiniemi focuses on spaces, objects and costumes – the relationship between the choreography of human bodies and the non-human elements.