A Day at the Big Stage

3.11.2025 0 Like 0 kommenttia

Choreographer Anna Maria Häkkinen writes about the big stage workshop organized at the Erkko Hall of Dance House Helsinki 15.10.2025.

A day at the big stage was a workshop organized by the UniArts Helsinki Dance Programs (BA, MA) and offered by the Dance House Helsinki. It was targeted to students and alumni.

The workshop was a rare opportunity to get familiar with the Dance House big stage environment, to explore its potentialities and possibilities in a light and supportive manner, from each participant’s perspectives. This day was a pop up pilot workshop offered by the Dance House and UniArts, and the experiences of the day will inform future developments of the big stage course as a study possibility.

Professor Kirsi Monni asked me to join together with her to plan and organize the pilot project “a day at the big stage”. Invitation to think and facilitate together how the day could unfold together with students and alumni was really inspiring because I haven’t been working at the Erkko Hall before. We ended up on a structure divided in four parts – entering the Dance House and short introduction, warm up and light tuning in together, choreographic proposals where we will work as a group of dancers through spatial improvisational scores and tasks as well as light compositional parameters, reflection and short feedback discussion.

We asked the enrolled participants to prepare in written format and send beforehand their choreographic proposals or score ideas/questions that they would be interested in trying out and discussing during the day. There was a guideline to notice the given time slot and supportive atmosphere towards each other. We were happy to notice how much variety there was already in the five choreographic scores we received. And I believe that this shaped the day to be explorative and opened the stage to be attended from different aspects of interest.

To the context

Getting in the Dance House was a labyrinth through the old Cable factory corridors and memories. Pannu Hall foyer reminded me how I have been waiting there a number of times for the performance to start, been performing there myself or shared a heartfelt moment during the festive toast after premieres. Even the Dance House is relatively new place (opened 2022) and a venue with two stages, a rehearsal studio and artist foyer, the Cable Factory holds a strong and evident history of local and international contemporary dance since the Zodiak Presents ry (1986) was founded and transformed to Zodiak – Center for New Dance (1997). It would be interesting to enlarge the residency in the future to the archive of Dance House – who have been there and what have been performed, classical chain of questions who, what, why, how… would be interesting to glance at before entering the Erkko Hall. The big stage already holds a thick catalog of performances throughout its opening year of 2022 from Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch Vollmond (Full Moon) to present day where many established Finnish choreographers and dance companies alongside Dance Theatre Hurjaruuth yearly Winter Circus have presented their work sharing the time line of events with visiting international guests and performances.

To the dance floor

I´ve been working some time now with the interest of compositional principles derived from minimalistic tradition – duration, repetition and variation. These concepts have been on my plate when considering the relationship to spatial dimensions, geometric floor patterns, accumulation and unison. Fascination towards the history of dance from pedestrian movement combined to repetitive structures have led me to dance to electronic dance music and ask how waves of sound can be choreographed to the dance floor when the unison or the concentration is not based on unified corps, but rather individuals tuning in to the dance. I based the warming up and tuning in part of the beginning of the day to questions and proposals aroused from the artistic process from my previous choreographic work Afterglow, low lingering slips of light (2023 Performa Biennial, 2025 Kiasma and Kai Art Center). It was truly a special moment to share steps, weight shifts and thoughts to such a large number of participants, students and professionals attending the space with side wing moltons spread around the black dance mat square. Notions of felt time, how it disappears, relationships between each other in a shared score or where the gravity points and golden ratio scales shifts the dimensions and depths of the stage, roused to be specific with the first session for me.

To the experimentation

Jenni Kivelä, Ryan Mason&Annamari Keskinen, Cindy Ng and Leila Kourkia proposed a score or choreographic question for the day. Chen Nadler was also prepared to share a score, but was unfortunately not able to participate. The tasks consisted of integrating speech and movement, exploring the physical quality of movement and material interaction, developing a playful rhythm score, and examining the relationship between the stage and the audience. Due to the large number of participants, it was possible for us to divide into groups positioned on stage and in the audience during the exercises. This provided us with the opportunity to experience both the act of observing and engaging in floor work simultaneously, which proved to be a productive working method. We also observed the diversity of approaches different choreographers take in directing or in communicating their artistic inquiries to the dancers. After each phase of work, we reflected together on our observations and experiences from the performer’s, choreogrpaher´s and the audience’s points of view.

To the end and forward

It felt important to inhabit the space without a certain production mode, as we all might recognize the certain mode of doing when there is a moment at hand to be ready to show something. This notion of lack of productivity as in an open stage or demo came up as avery positive aspect from the feedback we have received. Maybe this open ended state of mind gave space to the choreographic structures to be quite performative – how the stage was generous in that sense that it made visible and gave a highlighted performance sphere to all scores. For me the vast space made visible, besides human figures, spatial planes. These planes come to mind from Laban’s Movement Analysis, diagrams around and through your own kinesphere, as well as simultaneously with the entire space – and beyond (to the universe). This combination of straight lines or tangents ”thing” is something I was thinking about, especially in relation to the stage’s height and distances between dancer contemplating in place and dancer’s action. How the sense of Laban way of orienting could be played with, being aware of sagittal, vertical, horizontal and diagonal planes was one question or possibility that came now when visiting my notes from the day. One might turn those planes as a tool also to work with private, personal, social and cosmic dimensions and proximities. All this squared way of thinking can be an invitation or portal to bend and twist, morph and make an entropy or really a triumphal scale of spectacle – for example Florentina Holzinger´s TANZ that Liisa Risu reminded on the feedback.

Coming to work together outside the everydayness of school curriculum came forward through the feedback as very welcomed from the students point of view. How to get familiar with the big stage and context it holds and also how to connect and meet alumni, artists from the field, without pressure to produce any certain outcome was also very much appreciated. Also the small breaks between active stage time plays an important role in coming together, air to change thoughts in smaller groups.

Thank you for a good and fruitful day. It was wonderful to have the opportunity to try out different kinds of starting points offered by colleagues, as well as to explore the work of a dancer and choreographer on a big stage. I hope the course will continue in the future, and I’m very grateful that you made it free of charge for alumni! – Sanni Kriikku

With that being said, the space of Erkko Hall was huge and reminded me of my days in my Bachelor’s studies in Hong Kong, where we had a huge stage built in the academy. To be able to explore on a huge stage again gave a sense of nostalgia. After moving and performing in Europe, I realise there aren’t a lot of places that provide this size or allow workshops to happen on the stage itself. Workshops usually happen in a black box or smaller theatre space. So, a big thank you to Helsinki Dance House for providing this space. -Cindy Ng

Best wishes,
Anna Maria

Participants: Aino Aura, Iris Blauberg, Jenna Broas, Olivia Ikonen, Annamari Keskinen, Jenni Kivelä, Leila Kourkia, Sanni Kriikku, Sonja-Riitta Laine, Ryan Mason, Cindy Ng, Kiia Pasanen, Lydia Ponkiniemi, Kati Raatikainen, Liisa Risu and Marjukka Savolainen.