Video equipage with live dance by Réa Pihlasviita and Kimmo Koskela

A passionate beauty on stage and an austere, introvert woman on the screen – two versions of a person. Past and future meet in two contrasting art forms: ancient dance rites and video paraphanalia of our waning century’s last decade. Emancipation was desired, bitterly fought for, utterly cursed and then finally discarded. What remained was woman’s desire for her alter ego; deeply buried by existing morals and conformity as well as by the overshadowing desire to be man’s peer.

Symbolic scenes shape this extraordinary production. One of woman’s two faces mirrors the live movement while the second one captures her video multivision involvement. Events happen simultaneously on several levels and according to their place in their time. Desire and dull, everyday banality intermingle. The production is characterised by a technique and manipulation of rational mastery which, however, can only function by means of exhuberant joi de vivre and is represented by the colour red.

Finnish dance is mainly known through the Finnish National Ballet Helsinki and its choreographer Jorma Uotinen. Less known is the fact that young artists are trying to infuse the arts with new impulses.

Réa Pihlasviita received her classical ballet training in Helsinki and Paris and through her acquaintance with Kimmo Koskela turned as dancer and choreographer towards the waxing media of video art. Koskela first studied photography and today is an internationally-known authority in the field of dance video. Red’s speciality is the dancer’s fusion of live dance and video with Finnish symbolic substance.

»Light, sound, music, colour and form join in a diabolic spectrum. This is a witches brew … which drags the audience into a merry-go-round of fulfilment, maliciousness, darkness and calmness. Suggestive, innovative and brilliantly produced« (Hufvudstadsbladet, Helsinki, 14.06.1993).