Zodiak Laboratory is Zodiak's residency concept. In October 2025, the ZodLab residency artist is dancer, artist Jussi Ulkuniemi, together with their working group.
At the Zodiak Laboratory residency, we begin the first phase of my solo work Glimmering (working title), in collaboration with dramaturg Pie Kär and sound designer Satu Kankkonen.
Glimmering is a sensual play of a gender-fluid male body that dives into skin, stutters, negotiates, orientates and disorientates themself in order to arrive into a multitude of intimate gendered energies and states. The work challenges normativities of the male body and disrupts bodily categories and representations, transforming the space through an intimate physical biography unfolding on the stage.
Glimmering looks at femmephobia projected onto male bodies – a force that prevents men from softening, being supported and becoming vulnerable. In the background, there’s also the process of freeing my own body from the idealization of ultramasculinity deeply embedded within the gay culture. Glimmering focuses on deconstructing masculinity and playing with liminality, physical language, intimacy and vulnerability – and, in contrast, moments of power and tension.
In the residency, together with dramaturg Pie Kär, we will develop movement practices that help shape the performance. We focus on orientation and disorientation as choreographic tools. For example, as I begin to orient myself towards an intimate femme energy, different postures, spatialities, sensations, desires and memories begin to resonate through my body, moving me through space, towards others and into new, glimmering, intimate dances.
Sound designer Satu Kankkonen will also begin their work during the residency. Satu’s spacious soundscapes aim to sustain prolonged emotional and sensorial states, creating an energetic background for the intimate dances to arrive.