Principia
Principia is the first collaboration between the inclusive dance group Kaaos Company’s dancers, choreographer Kati Raatikainen, contemporary circus artist Jenny Mansikkasalo, sound designer Roy Boswell, set designer Aino Koski, costume designer Piia Rinne, and lighting designer Milla Martikainen.
The piece is a performance exploring the fundamentals of embodied existence and encounter. Performers Sally Davison, Georgie Goater, Kadar Khristan, Jenny Mansikkasalo, and Noora Västinen engage with space, time, gravity, and each other, hanging, depending, twisting, freeing, falling, alienating, intertwining, and transforming from one form to another.
The performance moves between earth and air, utilizing aerial acrobatics within the context of contemporary dance and somatics. The starting point for the physical work has been the rich experience of human embodiment and the relationship between sensation and movement in connection to the world.
Donna Haraway writes in her work Staying with the Trouble that we "world" in a multispecies community. Central to this is attuning to the (life, path, movement) patterns that different forms of life offer and receive from one another. Choreographically, I am interested in the dialogue between offering or guiding, and receiving and following. From the same work, the concept of terrapolis has also inspired me. The term intertwines the earth (terra) and urbanity (polis), allowing for the parallelism of at least social, material, ecological, evolutionary, biological, compostable, and responsible life. Such parallelism and interweaving of phenomena are present in everything, once we have the time to observe it. I am interested in building a performance landscape where phenomena can blend together and, on the other hand, become clarified in relation to each other.
Kaaos Company is an inclusive dance group founded in 2010 in Helsinki, whose work challenges normative and disability-related issues through the medium of performing arts. The group's activities redirect and reconstruct the concept of the body as "it is" and raise questions of equality and discrimination.
Working group:
Choreographic framework and direction: Kati Raatikainen
Aerial acrobatics facilitation: Jenny Mansikkasalo
Somatic facilitation: Sally Davison
Performers: Sally Davison (2022) / Kati Raatikainen (2024), Georgie Goater, Kadar Khristan, Jenny Mansikkasalo, Noora Västinen
Sound design: Roy Boswell
Lighting design: Milla Martikainen
Costume design: Piia Rinne
Scenography: Aino Koski
Producer: Inari Pesonen
Production support: Emmi Vainio
Production: Kaaos Company, DanceAbility Finland Association
Supported by: Kone Foundation, Arts Promotion Centre Finland
Residencies: Cirko – Center for New Circus
Photos: Annika Miettinen
Teaser (Lefa Leandro): YouTube Link
Performance recording Mad House 2024:
YouTube Link
Principia is the first collaboration between the inclusive dance group Kaaos Company’s dancers, choreographer Kati Raatikainen, contemporary circus artist Jenny Mansikkasalo, sound designer Roy Boswell, set designer Aino Koski, costume designer Piia Rinne, and lighting designer Milla Martikainen.
The piece is a performance exploring the fundamentals of embodied existence and encounter. Performers Sally Davison, Georgie Goater, Kadar Khristan, Jenny Mansikkasalo, and Noora Västinen engage with space, time, gravity, and each other, hanging, depending, twisting, freeing, falling, alienating, intertwining, and transforming from one form to another.
The performance moves between earth and air, utilizing aerial acrobatics within the context of contemporary dance and somatics. The starting point for the physical work has been the rich experience of human embodiment and the relationship between sensation and movement in connection to the world.
Donna Haraway writes in her work Staying with the Trouble that we "world" in a multispecies community. Central to this is attuning to the (life, path, movement) patterns that different forms of life offer and receive from one another. Choreographically, I am interested in the dialogue between offering or guiding, and receiving and following. From the same work, the concept of terrapolis has also inspired me. The term intertwines the earth (terra) and urbanity (polis), allowing for the parallelism of at least social, material, ecological, evolutionary, biological, compostable, and responsible life. Such parallelism and interweaving of phenomena are present in everything, once we have the time to observe it. I am interested in building a performance landscape where phenomena can blend together and, on the other hand, become clarified in relation to each other.
Kaaos Company is an inclusive dance group founded in 2010 in Helsinki, whose work challenges normative and disability-related issues through the medium of performing arts. The group's activities redirect and reconstruct the concept of the body as "it is" and raise questions of equality and discrimination.
Working group:
Choreographic framework and direction: Kati Raatikainen
Aerial acrobatics facilitation: Jenny Mansikkasalo
Somatic facilitation: Sally Davison
Performers: Sally Davison (2022) / Kati Raatikainen (2024), Georgie Goater, Kadar Khristan, Jenny Mansikkasalo, Noora Västinen
Sound design: Roy Boswell
Lighting design: Milla Martikainen
Costume design: Piia Rinne
Scenography: Aino Koski
Producer: Inari Pesonen
Production support: Emmi Vainio
Production: Kaaos Company, DanceAbility Finland Association
Supported by: Kone Foundation, Arts Promotion Centre Finland
Residencies: Cirko – Center for New Circus
Photos: Annika Miettinen
Teaser (Lefa Leandro): YouTube Link
Performance recording Mad House 2024:
YouTube Link