| Article by Robert von Lucius, Ballett Tanz Aktuell August 2005 MeMoRe: The wallpaper layers of contemporary dance, viewed by Tomi Paasonen <<Memories, they are but fragments, that release associations, some chunks with gaps, filled by imagination.>> These are not words by a neurologist, but a choreographer, who ads <<memories are neurological networks established and strengthened by repetition, a chaotic index organized by significance.>> Only a few in the dance world have investigated memory, body, movement and their relation to one another like the Finnish Tomi Paasonen. What he reads and detects, he implements mostly onto small stages: Dance and memory are one of his main themes, additionally the vulnerability of the human body, extreme states, physical and mental disability. A separation between physical and mental he would regard as erroneous, because the head is part of the body, and where does one draw the line between thoughts, recollections, physical motion and mobility of the thought process? <<The brain is the realm where the material and the mental intersect; and reminiscence is by all means a physical procedure.>> This devotion was also manifested as the former soloist of John Neumeier’s Hamburg Ballet (who also danced some years in Chicago and directed his own company KUNST-STOFF in San Francisco), resulting an accident 7 years ago, no longer was able to dance. In his latest work <<D.I.D. – a choir piece for one man>> (danced by the Greek Jorgos Fokianos) at the Berlin Dock11, he tackled schizophrenia, splitting of the self, mirror images and contradicting identities; <<MeMoRe – searching for the red thread>> at the Old Weaving Mill in Alt-Stralau (Berlin) was a << auto-biographical audio-visual physical theatre symphony>>; and in <<Olotila>> a piece with disabled dancers running since 2000, is about the cult of the healthy body and the limits of physicality. Not only the accident where a piece of ceiling fell on him, contributed to his concentration on <<the body-memory>>, but also his relocation to Berlin. Until then the 35 year old Paasonen who left Finland at the age of 17 and thus <<melted his Finnish ice>>, perceived himself as a <<suitcase case without a home>>, in a constant forward motion without looking back. Berlin meant to him a return to Europe, and then, with the apartment of his own two years ago, at first also a space, where he could have all his books and belongings in one place. Promptly two pasts caved over him – the one of the flat, with 6 layers of wallpaper he scratched for two months, and his own: Now he had diaries, photos around himself, and with them the theme memory, which he wants to research artistically. Most of the physical functions, he learned, are connected to older parts of the brain – like instinct, a sort of pre-memory and survival reflex, whereas the act of conscious movement happens in the neo-cortex, the newer brain layer. Especially in the context of dance, movement and art, the relationship between instinct, inevitability and control fascinated him. So in <<MeMoRe>> he combined the unaware, untrained and <<honest>> movement quality of laymen with the honed, articulated and artificial quality of an educated body of a dancer, which has developed its physical intelligence. Paasonen read keenly, about loop-theories, the connection between repetition and recollection. Repetition, Tomi Paasonen concluded, was remembering forwards and remembering was repeating backwards. This he visualized in his piece “PRESENTATION”, also presented at Dock11, Berlin, a piece about repetition and difference, recollection and becoming and the search of the self. Memory is reinforced by repetition, in life as in dance; and erasing is almost impossible. He who’d react without memory, in life or on stage, would be like a fish in an eternal loop of instinctual presence, without a past, future or identity. On the other hand Paasonen – also guest teacher, photographer, filmmaker, video artist and opera director in his native Helsinki, believes memory is quite untrustworthy. Memory and imagination are allies, which accomplish one another. This dramaturgic arc, reality and deceit can be found again on stage. We have to be allowed to lie in theatre, otherwise it would neither be exciting nor theatre. |
| Arnd Wesemann, Tanz Aktuell MeMoRe – searching for the red thread With one leg the dancer stands at the ballet bar. Without a second leg that he could lift. His immaculate posture however, produces the effect that one still effortlessly can mentally ad this absent leg as lifted. Homer Avila is the name of this brilliant American dancer, who after his leg amputation in 2001, proved that dance with three limbs can be a first class aesthetic experience. After dying last April, the former Neumeier dancer Tomi Paasonen now dedicates his piece MeMoRe to him. Like neural connections, six dancers weave threads on the small stage at Berlin’s new arena on the Stralau peninsula. Centrally stands a washing machine, that washes the bundle of previous performances. Images on the bare walls illuminate memories, Paasonen’s large theme, as in his last performance in April “Presentation”, which circled around themes of repetition and alteration of the knowledge gained – and this time literally circled. It depicts memorising text passages, the evolutionary purpose of memory, about history, of ones own fragmented reminiscence, which contents itself with family photographs and once danced choreographies, in order to immediately produce the feeling of nostalgia and loss. Philosophically driven, Paasonen has achieved no big choreography, but rather a literal mediation, already due to the fact that he himself directs the imagery from the centre of the space. Had he only remembered the dance, the muscle-memory. Or the history of this fleeting art form. |
| Robert von Lucius, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung The read twines of memory Tomi Paasonen turns the Finnish dance inside out The spectators sit on stools scattered in the space and don’t know where they should look, flooded by colours and stimulus. Six dancers twirl read and green threads around them, denser and denser, at times they halt and murmur something conspiratorial or unseemly into people’s ears or photograph them with Polaroid. On the walls imagery from the lives of the dancers with historical photographs keep switching, surrounded by steel grid, light bulbs, and paper stripes. The music comes from a self built instrument In the centre by the projector on the washing machine stands the Finnish choreographer Tomi Paasonen, who loves and offers treats of the unusual – his piece “MeMoRe – searching for the red thread” at the Dansens Hus in Oslo and before that in the Alte Weberei (Old Weaving Mill) in Berlin. Even within the Finnish contemporary dance scene, which produces several unconventional choreographers, Paasonen, who lives in Berlin since three years, stands out. Paasonen loves to confuse und wipe out borders, also between mainstream and periphery, the way his images often disintegrate in light or fog. This 35-year-old former soloist from John Neumeier’s Hamburg Ballet also won’t to let himself be predefined by any particular medium. Besides dance films, photo exhibitions, and guest teaching from Berlin to Freiburg, he directed a Debussy opera in his native Helsinki. There his piece “Olotila” (State of Being) was awarded as “Theatre Event of the Year 2000”; at the end of the year 2004 he brought this piece with disabled and professional dancers onto the Berlin Hebbel-am-Ufer theatre and beginning of this year a multi-layered dance solo with Jorgos Fokianos at Dock11. In “MeMore – searching for the red thread” Paasonen pursues the “coincidence or not”, showed, how details of each life get interwoven in the process of exchange and projection of these moments. Hence he cast a neuroscientist without stage experience as one of the dancers in this “autobiographical dance theatre symphony” that activated all our senses. Certain life experiences that won’t leave his mind and have formed him and his work – as a woman threw herself to death from a balcony as he was biking by; as the ceiling fell during a rehearsal for this piece, which was identical to the situation that ended his own dance career some years ago. These experiences led him to work gently with disabled, as well as the edgy robotic qualities of his dances. He is fascinated by fragility, also of the body. As he left Finland at the age of 17, his “Finnish ice melted” he says. His first longer piece of his own he choreographed at the age of 21 for the Kampnagel Fabrik in Hamburg. Some years he danced in Chicago, in San Francisco he directed a company KUNST-STOFF, co-founded by him. Paasonen stands in a row of other Finnish choreographers and dancers who work abroad, like Kenneth Kvanrström, who about a year ago dissolved his group in order to take directorship of the most important dance venue in Sweden, Dansens Hus in Stockholm, as well as Virpi Pähkinen who has relocated to Sweden. Kvarnström says in Finland you have the heart and the energy, but in Sweden the money, to bring it on stage. But Finland has a quite a bit to offer in contemporary dance – from the Zodiak Centre for New Dance at the Cable Factory to the Kuopio Dance Festival, North Europe’s oldest dance festival, and the “Full Moon Dances” in Pyhäjärvi and a Dance Information Centre, founded already a quarter of a century ago which produces a quarterly magazine; and starting 2005 there will be more tax money for dance. To the known choreographers belong Tero Saarinen, who regards the stage as a canvas he gives colour to. What is Finnish about his dances? His pieces, says Saarinen, are about the insignificant man in a stormy world, guided in his loneliness by larger forces. The choreographers in Helsinki are unanimous on the fact that Finnish dance is individual, has a minimalist sense of humour and a mystical, almost spiritual Quality, with attention towards atmosphere rather than content. Add a particular emphasis on sophisticated light and sound design, probably linked to the strong theatre tradition in Finland, also in small towns. Tomi Paasonen is part of this tradition, weather he wants it or not. But in one thing he differs strongly from the “Finnish” dance: they are never slow, comfortable, without strong contrasts and intrigues, for this he’s got too much zest of action. |
| Theatre Magazine Teatterijuttu Minni Leskinen Brainwash I should write, while I still remember. But what do I remember, and why? At first everything came too close. I was trying the relate to the Israeli girl, who asked the man in front of me, which presidents made the peace agreement between Egypt and Israel. I had come to see a dance performance, but those dancers didn’t want to be objects but people. I started to watch them like people on the street or cafés – studying, not simply enjoying. There was a lot of talking. “I would have liked to see more structured choreographies”, my friend said afterwards. I started thinking, yes, yes! The performance had choreography: choreography of chaos. My washing machine is spinning as background music to my thoughts tonight. For how long will I remember that Wednesday evening each time I do my laundry? Or will I simply remember this evening more strongly every time I hear the throbbing sound of a washing machine? All circumstances influence memory formation. I was at a job interview during the day at the Cable Factory – I was at a spellbinding dance performance that evening. Memories carry each other, they strengthen each other, - in good and bad. As a lover of dance and video art, I was mesmerized by the seamless fusion of picture and movement – not to mention the sound-scape. The closeness of the beginning and the clear division of the piece into small vignettes, broke into a section that sucked me into a trance, where even the fragmented atmosphere was swept into a vortex, which kept me on my toes more than any work of art from any genre has in a long time. (Oh why did it have to be too long?) A net of yarn that had been evolving throughout the piece sparked electrifyingly, drawn by the spatial paths of the dancers. It pictured all the neurons, which connections spark in our brains as we remember and forget. A German neuroscientist in the cast lifted his patient onto the washing machine like onto a surgical table and lobotomized his tangled neurones. Oh if it was so easy. In an interesting way the dancers seemed to be more or less present in my experience. Just like people, that one encounters in life too. Some pass by, others leave imprints. A Greek boy tied blue thread around the stone of my ring. The ring and with it myself became a part of that web. I had goose bumps; the ambience was concentrated, quiet, physical, almost holy. But every moment – of course not. But I admired: the German boy’s dance with a square of light as the body parts seemingly became two-dimensional images with the light, the Greek boy’s projected memories repeatedly cutting into downward spiralling stairs, or the American boy’s film-like expression and ubiquitous energy. Anything bad? Don’t want to mention. The ending was genius: I understood that the piece had ended. The usage of picture taking as part of the problem of memory as from daily life and hit the spot. Just as Polaroid pictures become pale, also our memories change, until the completely disappear. At the same time the work placed itself as part of this ever-renewing process; maybe we’ll never create anything unforgettable, but feel and take pleasure in it! Oh and one memory: a man dancing ballet with one leg. (No more words.) |
| Jussi Tossavainen for Helsingin Sanomat, Main Helsinki Newspaper Washing program rinses the laundry of our memories MeMoRe – searching for the red thread. Choreography and Direction Tomi Paasonen It is violent to write immediately after the performance of Tomi Paasonen’s MeMoRe. It is so much! And undoubtedly will have an long lasting effect. After the show the head is in a chaotic void of analysis. Similarly to Paasonen’s mega hit State of Being, MeMore achieves to disturb the spectator in a tantalizing way, but so that one is obliged to reflect upon it and the questions it poses. Hence it is questionable to attempt writing pseudo-objectively, because the performance is different for each spectator. We sit among the dancers on chairs spread out all over the stage and see various things. Not to mention that as the performance delves into its memory theme, it releases our own reminiscing, each one their own and on top of it the collective memory. In the middle of the performance area there is a washing machine, which goes through its long cycle, determining phase by phase the rhythm and pace of the piece. Pre-wash, washing, rinsing and centrifuge… and finally we are clean from the task of unresolved recollections. Although for us spectators the process is only beginning. Tomi Paasonen asks a lot from his performers. Each has generously given out personal materials for the work. Despite one never has the feeling of a voyeur. The leaks are sometimes funny, sometimes tragic, like life. Quite small things, but on a personal scale big. Everyone knows how something that might seem small in the eyes of others, can torture one self for the rest of ones life. Yael Schnell from Israel tells us of a childhood game where land is conquered from the opponent. The game is over when the opponent no longer has land to stand on. The scene ends with a picture of Yael in a military uniform. The details revealed by the other performers are equally small, but painful and touching. Memory is an extraordinary thing. How these millions of small details we carry in our minds make us human. And in the end it is all a result of electrical and chemical currents in our brain. To remind us of this we have a light and sound installation with a neural web of electrified copper strings making light bulbs flicker above us. During the performance the audience is also bound into a web of threads becoming denser as the collective memory of the piece grows. And that is what we are - for the performers and to the participating spectators, this is a shared memory. But what happens when the centrifuge has done its job and the wash cycle is over? Amnesia - or liberation of our memories? Dancer Homer Avila, who is only present on video, brings a dramatic addition to the piece. He died before the premiere of the piece. We would need more disturbers like Tomi Paasonen. I don’t know when last I have sat in a theatre for an hour and a half mentally so on my toes. |
| HufvudstadsbladeT, by Jan-Peter Kaiku Memories that connect As we as the audience enter the performance space we have read the instructions. You are welcome to change the sitting direction of your chair, but please do not move the chairs themselves. A traditional stage context does not need an instruction like this. As we now collectively, a group of about 50 chose our chairs scattered on the stage, it is needed. White screens and papers in a black space, light bulbs hanging on a dense grid, a central washing machine, and six artists dressed in white in a corner and we, spectators (participants), spread on the floor, divided into 4 groups, set up for a different theatre experience. For a happening-like installation, with an unusual form of part taking in the moment. Known for his successful award-winning and generally loved “State of Being” for a cast of physically disabled performers, Berlin-based Tomi Paasonen now comes to the Norwegian dance scene with his piece MeMoRe – searching for the red thread. MeMoRe, for seven performers from different backgrounds, premiered in Berlin in September, gives many perspectives on how we remember, forget and construct meaning. The theme is concretized as quick associative processes with private (documentary) and universal (shared) poignancies and a continuous feeling that what occurs throughout the process of the show is and becomes meaningful. The search for the thread itself is the most important, because the clump of ever-growing interwoven knotted threads that is brought on at the beginning and washed in every performance – has several starting- and ending points and synapses in surprising directions. From the seven original cast members participating in the creation of MeMoRe, only six are left on stage. Dancer Homer Avila from New York died of cancer three months before the premiere and is only present in the form of video and email correspondence. Despite this, many of us will especially remember him. We see him taking a ballet class with only one leg, as the other one has been amputated due to his illness. We see him triumphant as he succeeds jumping onto a table with only one leg. The stuff for the others on stage, Greek Jorgos Fokianos, German Frank Freyer and Alexander Sieber, Yael Schnell from Israel, American Frank Willens and Japanese Yuko Matsuyama, is tailored and generated my their lives and personalities. The staging is in dialogue with eclectic imagery, characteristic of Paasonen’s creativity. I was especially taken by the enthusiastic and playful spirit of the performance, of the richness of associations, the composition of the curve of the epos and of the different commentaries on the things that make us similar and different. |
| Liikekieli.com, by Sari Lakso Walking down the memory lane As I go through moments, impressions and emotions after seeing Tomi Paasonen’s MeMoRe-performance, the first thing that comes to mind are threads and Frank. Let me clarify: The hour and a half long time and memory journey, keeps you in its grip from beginning to end. Above the scattered chairs there is a web of copper thread. The audience is sitting on the stage area itself. The walls are filled with strips of differently sized sheets of paper, also bigger surfaces to project upon later. The white costumes of the dancers also function as projection surfaces. As I observe the space, I think well, there isn’t much space for dancing. But as the piece proceeds, I understand that it isn’t Paasonen’s intension to divide the space two-dimensionally. Each performer presents his history and stories in a different part of the outer space, as a washing machine literally goes through its program in the centre of the space. The only time I wished I had sat on a different seat was during Frank Willens’s part to music by Led Zeppelin. The story and his energy got me to hold my breath and I wished I had been able to experience it at a closer proximity. I wonder if people in a front row in a rock concert feel the same way? So close, but so far away. The personal tales of the performers, in a similar way as in Paasonen’s “State of Being”, grant the piece a heavy and deep level. But luckily not in a painstaking voyeuristic way, when the spectator feels embarrassed for the performer. When the individual material is elusive enough, it becomes common and touching. This is a skill that Paasonen possesses. Of many thrilling moments I especially remember Japanese girl Yuko Matsuyama’s and Greek boy Jorgos Fokianos’s duet. Common-worldly humanity crystallized for me into that moment of lyrical singing. Paasonen’s way of using surprising turns of events without changing the initial situation, upholds the tension through out the piece. A web of threads above us becomes denser as the dancers move and dance around the space with spools of threads in their hands. I get tied in by my elbow and feel myself to be part of the “interconnectivity”. At the end the web gets torn and we are all again on our own… A less used “audience and performer in an equal position” –form worked for me as a spectator very well. I am part of the piece, that happens around me and I get to have a direct contact with the performers. I was an active participant, I answered questions asked to me, I attempted to see everything around me, and still the border between the viewer and artists was maintained in a fine line. More productions like this, please! Afterwards reading in the program book that the ceiling fell during the rehearsal period, which is frighteningly directly linked to Paasonen’s own career-ending accident, I admire his courage to fulfil the initiated process into completion. For many this “omen” could have killed their motivation, but on the other hand one could think of it as closing the circle and as an end to a particular time cycle. As I watched the video of the one-legged ballet dancer training at the bar, my understanding of my own happiness receives an additional point of view. On the other hand it also reminds me of the fact that not everything is for the stage. Thank you and big bow to the choreographer and the entire cast for great work! |
| Demari News, by Annikki Alku In the web of our memories The first dance company guest performance at the Helsinki Festival was Tomi Paasonen’s international group PAA (Public Artistic Affairs) with their piece MeMoRe in Zodiak Theatre at the Cable Factory. Tomi Paasonen has worked for long abroad and is remembered for his previous work “State of Being” which granted him the “Theatre Event of the Year” award. MeMoRe is simultaneously a very private and very universal physical theatre performance. Its themes are memory, the performers very own and the collective ones, old ones and the ones forming at that very moment. The piece attempts from the very beginning to consciously to break with our typical perception of theatre. The chairs are placed into clumps in different directions around the stage. Through out the performance the dancers pull and tie colourful strings across the entire space, so that gradually even the audience is tied into this web. Private Pictures The performers of the piece are from different countries and very different backgrounds. Also their memories that have been chosen into the material of the piece to be shared with everyone are very diverse. What is common about them is strong intimacy, which is heightened by picture collages from the family albums projected onto the stories. And still the spectator doesn’t feel uncomfortable. Yet towards the end, at least I asked myself the question, so what? The stories do not converse with one another, and not necessarily with the audience either. They only mix with one another like the clump of threads being washed by the washing machine. MeMoRe lasts concretely the duration of a wash cycle, 90 minutes without a break. It is most surprising that the time doesn’t seem long at all. Except towards the end when they break open the web and take photographs of them selves with the audience. The most dramatic part of the performance is the video presence of dancer Homer Avila, who died of cancer before the premiere of MeMoRe. MeMoRe demands a lot from its performers, because there is no distance to the audience, which is why each performance is partially unpredictable and more unique than normally. Each one of the young performers are very honest and unpretentiously present. And this is probably the most valuable asset of this piece. |
| Neues Deutschland, by Nino Ketschagmadse For One Wash Cycle The dance piece “MeMoRe” explores old memories „It is an attempt quasi a posteriori to lend one self a past, from which one would like to originate.” Repeatedly a young man reads this sentence from a little yellow booklet. He tries to recite it by heart, failing over and over. On the wall behind him projections flicker, dissolve into one another. What we see are smiling people on old family portraits. The space in which all this takes place is small and covered in a red carpet. In the centre is a washing machine on a pedestal. Around it scattered into space several stools for the audience. The young man puts on the washing machine. The fine wash cycle begins and propelled by its sounds five other dancers slowly consort with him. With fluid and at times accelerating movements, they weave colourful strings across the space – also around the spectators. A web of true and made-up memories is woven. In “MeMoRe – searching for the red thread” Tomi Paasonen’s physical theatre PAA (Public Artistic Affairs) embark on a journey inside the human brain – into realms shared by recollection as well as imagination and dreaming. During the wash cycle we witness a symphony of documentary and personal materials, of photos and moving images, consisting not only of texts from Oliver Sacks and the founder of Feldenkrais method, but also part of the personal history of the cast. Perhaps this is why the, at times carefully fragile, at times expressively articulated movements come across so harmonious. If some strings snap in the web, which in the mean time has grown dense, the other actors step in to mend it. |
| 22.08.2005, Turun Sanomat, Review by Kaisa Kurikka MeMoRe is physical theatre for seven performers The strings and images of memory As I am writing this, I occasionally look at a photograph of nine persons, unknown to me. A few of them I can name, but I don’t know much more about them. With these unfamiliar people I spent a few hours in the same space Friday night. They have become part of my memory, and the photograph is a mark of this. I will put the picture into my drawer among miscellaneous papers, and when it pops out of there, it will make me remember an evening at the Helsinki Festival on Zodiak’s stage. The photograph was given to me at the Finnish premiere of MeMoRe – a piece, directed by Tomi Paasonen. Towards the end of the piece the performers mingled among the spectators, taking Polaroid pictures, which were given to random audience members. There is something essential about the process of making memories, and both the random and systematic procedure of recollection, that is crystallized in this act of taking and giving of these photographs. Remembrance demands often an impulse or a fixative, like a photograph, and this side of reminiscence MeMoRe-performance illustrates to the point. This piece seems to suggest that the reasons we chose our remembering and forgetting, is rather random. Remembering starts to seem like chaos, that mixes intentional choices with unconscious impulses. Fine wash Tomi Paasonen (*1970), left Finland at the age of 17 and danced among others with the Hamburg Ballet. He has choreographed since 1991 in USA, Germany and Finland. Additionally he has made short films and held photo exhibitions. In Berlin he has lived since 2001 and MeMoRe, shown at Zodiak theatre, is part of the repertoire of PAA (Public Artistic Affairs), a company he has founded there. PAA concentrates on the relationship between the performer and moving image, and this is central to MeMoRe as well. MeMoRe is physical theatre for seven performers and a washing machine. At the performance begins, a bundle of strings is put to wash in the washing machine, placed at the centre of the space. The performance ends when the spin cycle has ended and the strings are hung up for drying. The piece builds great parallels between the wash programs and how the piece proceeds. Especially the spin cycle, where the softening water is sucked away and the contents are left at the mercy of the vortex, gets a great equivalence in the stage action. Shivering the performers move between the audience members, breaking the web they have constructed with great effort. The cobweb of memory This cobweb is an essential part of the play and it can be thought to embody both the neurological side of memory as well as traces of actions chained into a net. Each performer has a spool of thread, which they tie to the space, onto the chairs of the spectators until above us we see a beautiful network of thread, like a mnemonic map. Each performer takes a turn to bring out personal traces through photos, music and speech. While music connected to their own history is played, images of family and familiar places are projected onto them. Past meets presence, as the performer is simultaneously present twice in space and time. The performers are of different nationality and naturally their memories reflect this. The most touching and imprinting is the part of Homer Avila. Avila died of cancer before the Berlin-premiere of the piece and he is present only on video and email correspondence regarding the piece. Avila’s one leg is amputated and in a video sequence he trains at the ballet bar, at times using a crutch as the second leg. This picture achieves to depict something essential about dance and the desire to do it. The making of the space The performance happens all over the space and the audience sits on individual chairs on which they can turn. The dancers move in-between the spectators, asking questions about the history of their native countries. The spectator is concretely and constantly part of the process of remembering and producing new memories. Symbolism is in many ways central to the piece. It appears through the videos related to the performers. Maybe the finest in the use of the pictures is, that the viewer becomes in real time part of this virtual reality. During the later part of the piece, the screens get images of the audience and dancers with a slight delay. It is odd, to watch the live screening of the happening and one self as part of it. In a contradicting way, in relation to the theme, simultaneity seems more impressive than the past. The wash cycle could be shorter, because as the periods repeat, they start to rotate around themselves. The past events, however important to the performers themselves, didn’t rise up to be particularly interesting, but much more so the present moment, the happening of the performance. In the end there is no access to someone’s private memories, because they are always constructed through the self, as we reconstruct our own self. |
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