Suvi Kemppainen, working group: From a Great Height

From a Great Height by Suvi Kemppainen and their working group is a performance about the poetics of subsidence and the materialization of disappearance.

The choreographic sonic ceremony for five dancers and a multichannel speaker system draws its audience into a submerged world of hidden depths and compelling forces. Anchored  in psychopoetic corporeality and combining multidisciplinary crafts, From a Great Height invites the audience to descend into the subconscious.

Through eternal orbiting¹, hollow and full bone drop, spiraling melodies, and fragments of language the piece opens an otherworldly horizon just before a page is turned. These elements converge into a dizzying vision of interregnum: threshold space where the old world has ended, and the new has not yet begun.

From a Great Height is a profound reflection on our current moment, embracing the edge of the unknown. How do we descend together from a great height, in the midst of a fall that continues to accelerate?

¹Revolving motion. Both cosmic and earthly.

Bios

Suvi Kemppainen is an internationally working choreographer, dancer, performer, and performance maker. Kemppainen's artistic works are anchored in their practice around  fantastic psychopoetic corporeality, embodied knowledge, immaterial ownership and reframing the concept of spectacle. After graduating as a dancer from North Karelia College Outokumpu in Finland Suvi Kemppainen continued their choreography studies at the University of Arts Berlin HZT. Their works have been presented at the Ateneum Art Museum, Helsinki; Contemporary Art Space Kutomo, Turku; Sophiensaele, Berlin; Zodiak Center for New Dance, Helsinki. www.suvikemppainen.com

Klaus Maunuksela is a writer and dramaturg whose artistic work moves at the stages of literature, performance, and sound art. He is currently working on an artistic doctoral research project on experimental audiobook aesthetics at the Theatre Academy of the University of the Arts Helsinki. Since 2017, Maunuksela has closely collaborated with composer Walter Sallinen on various works that combine sound and text. In recent years, he has published two novels: Manuaali (2022) and Prosessi (2024), which, like his other text- and book-based works, have expanded into parallel formats in the form of performances and sound pieces.

Walter Sallinen is a Helsinki-based composer and sound artist. Sallinen's work spans from spatial and installative sound rituals to graphically notated performances and acousmatic compositions. His artistic practice explores the potential of interdisciplinarity as a compositional tool for unforeseen collaborative concepts. In recent years, Sallinen's work has centered around a search for the affected surplus and sublimity in contemporary sonorities both as a reaction and a reflection to an all too hyper-normalised reality.

Vilma Mankonen is a dance artist based in Helsinki. They perform and make performances with others. Vilma is curious about the multiplicity of experienced realities which each of us holds together in one body and time. Leaky waters of carefully constructed selves, and play with habits, expectations and senses of control keep Vilma moving. 

Marlon Moilanen is a dancer based in Helsinki, Finland. Performing mainly in the realms of contemporary dance and performance, he works with psychic and soulfully experienced body, which allows the contradictory human being to be seen on the stage – where often sensitivity, darkness and humor are in intimate relations. Recently he has collaborated with choreographers Maija Hirvanen, Sonja Jokiniemi, Liisa Pentti, Kati Korosuo and Karolina Ginman. Besides dance art, he currently researches contemporary legal issues and governance of social rights at the University of Helsinki. The socio-legal perspectives inspire also his artistic interests e.g. on the political possibilities of the body and questions of disagreement and consensus at the stages of dance art. 

kiana rezvani (born in west Iran, based in Berlin, Germany) is an artist, choreographer and researcher developing choreographic and performative formats that blend dance, text, video and voice and are presented at theaters, galleries and independent curatorial spaces. Their artistic practice revolves around histories and narratives that are forgotten, untold, concealed and suppressed. Weaving together personal and collective memories and finding distinct parallels and intersections, kiana's works craft new relations and realms of possibility, critically examining colonial and imperial constructs, and thereby, creating a space for poetic resilience. Their solo and collaborative works have been shown at Sophiensaele, Uferstudios, Dock 11, Scwankhalle and Theater im Depot among others. cyber ghosts (2022) and cycle of ruins (2023) were kiana’s latest performances premiered in Berlin.

Kauri Sorvari is a Helsinki-Berlin based performer and a dance maker graduated from Theatre Academy Helsinki (BA & MA in dance performance), partly conducted in SODA-program (HZT, Berlin). Kauri has also specialized for two years in musical theater studies (singing and acting) and has a background in classical piano. Kauri has also graduated as an neurodiversity coach. Kauri loves to learn from different contexts and cultural environments in the performing arts, travels a lot and works quite widely in the free field, part of collectives as well as in bigger institutions.

Eevi Tolvanen is a queer dance artist, performer, and choreographer who dreams of worlds where community, redistribution of power, and intergenerational care can unfold. Their work draws from long-standing community engagement, shaping spaces where dance becomes a force for change and connection. Tolvanen leads the Queer Dance Group-dance community and the Queer Generations- project.

Mikko Kaukonen is a lighting designer and scenographer. He is interested in performance dramaturgy, atmosphere and the relationship between the performance and its space. Working across multiple roles within the performing arts, he aims to broaden his understanding of stage, experience and performance. 

Hanne Jurmu is a costume designer who works in contemporary dance and theatre performances. With a deep interest in the clothed body, Jurmu explores form and silhouette through a tactile, hands-on approach. She values handcraft and carefully chosen materials, often incorporating found objects and flea market treasures into her work. Her designs reflect a sensitivity to texture, movement, and the stories that materials can tell.