Larisa Vodynina,
director of Karelian College of Culture and Arts 
dance department, coach-expert of the project "Dancing Whirlpool"

From the project "Dancing Whirpool' to scenic representation: reflections on creative tasks of a choreographer in contemporary choreography

The project "Dancing Whirlpool" is the result of long cooperation between choreographic department of Karelian College of Culture and Arts (Russia) and a line of modern choreography of North Karelian College in Outukumpu (Finland). Our creative collaboration started in 2007 when the head of the choreographic department of North Karelian College in Outukumpu Yurkki Happala organized joint workshops in Karelian College of Culture and Arts in Petrozavodsk. Master classes were conducted by leaders of dance theater "Iguana" from St. Petersburg  as well as Karelian and Finnish teachers .  The master classes were attended by students of both colleges. Such an immersion experience of new contemporary dance techniques seemed interesting not only to our first-year students but to the Finnish side as well. Despite all the differences of approaches to the solution of  stage space,  nature of movement, organization of plastic material and the very notion of "theatrical" and "concert" we found many points of contact . Mutual interest to the creative work of our colleges has been maintained throughout the years. There were exchanges between groups of students of our colleges. During our creative meetings master classes in various techniques of dance were conducted. Choreographic ensemble "Stud.dans" from Karelian College of Culture and Arts (its artistic director is the head of the department of choreography Vodynina LY, teacher - Januszewski M.A.) visited Outukumpu with concert programs, representing all areas of choreography, studied by the students of our college. Yurkki Happala and Katarina Vahakalio demonstrated their students' work in the field of performance.
As a result of such close cooperation the idea to combine all creative efforts of our colleges in one performance, to create the atmosphere of co-creation, uniting Russian and Finnish students and teachers and, of course, to learn from each other all the best that we have accumulated over the years of both separation of its existence was born.
 The creative task proved to be quite challenging and very interesting. Initially we knew we would have to resolve many problems occurring due to differences in approaches to the creation of choreographic works, taken in Russia and in the West. I'll try to explain the most obvious creative puzzles that require joint solutions in the process of creating a dance product "Dancing whirlpool".
Our college students are accustomed to working on the stage when the whole choreography is deployed to the viewer and suggests that the viewer must clearly understand why and what is happening on the stage. The logic of the action and the directorial approach to the dance steps have been the cornerstone of building choreographic works since the time of the prominent 18th century ballet reformer Jean-Georges Noverre. It is a tradition of Russian choreographic art that has centuries-old roots. Russian audience is brought up on the traditions of ballet and while watching a dancing product on the stage is acting as a passive consumer of the finished product in which the choreographer has placed all accents, built a through action and outlined his views about the sum of what is happening on the stage.
Performance in the modern choreographic art is a very different system of organization of the plastic material. The choreographer does not logical inferences in the performance. His work has many meanings, there are no characters, there is no conflict, there is often no action. The main object of study  becomes a dancer, his body and the possibilities of this particular body to self-expression. The viewer becomes a participant in the sacred act of creation of dance movement and is free to invent a story and make any conclusions. In postmodern meaning the viewer's activity predominates over the author's one. It means that ideas and meanings first of all are given by the audience. It can generally remain behind the scenes  what the author meant. In postmodernism  this feature is indicated in the characteristic expression :"death of the author."  If any ideas were not in the original plan, it does not mean that they can not appear at the time of execution  or after it , for example, during the discussion.
A performance gives the viewer the opportunity to get out of the role of a passive observer - user ("I've already seen it, I want to see something new !") and try on the role of the creator (including creator of sense) . He has the right to see what HE wants to see - not the author ...
Thus, it's better to look after the basic meaning of the performance not in the performance itself but in the space of those individual experiences and impressions that the audience is experiencing. In a performance we meet that rare situation when every viewer creates his own work , based on the incentives offered by the author.
Our relation to dance movements varies greately. Russian school of classical ballet from immemorial times gives priority to the posture and movement - as a transition from pose to pose. The art of classical dance is characterized by perfection, beauty and grace of movement execution, synchronization and musical performances of dance phrases in accordance with the musical rhythm, meter and melody. Techniques of posmodern danc, emerged in the 50s of the 20th century, the founder of which was Merce Cunningham, rejected the dependence of dance movements not only on the scenario and whatever was the idea, but also on the music. In an effort to identify the intrinsic value of choreography in a number of other arts Merce Cunningham refused dominant role of music as a fundamental principle of human body dance pulse. The focus was put on body weight, respiration, pulse, politsentriya, transfer of energy from one part of the body to another. On the first place there is the individuality of the dancer with all his natural advantages and disadvantages. A body of a dancer lost its static and visual stability.
Movement is a loss of balance, the transition from a static state to a dynamic state. Dance was not just a set of traditional dance elements in various combinations but a manifestation of a unique plastic individuality of a choreographer and of a dancer. Merce Kennighem with John Cage introduced radical innovations in choreography which were in fact the democratization of dance. Kennighem refused system of "stars"- all the dancers on the stage were equal. The space was decentralized - equal importance was given to all its areas, the audience chose where to concentrate. The main deviation from the rules of traditional modern dance choreography was that dancers were given the choice of what to do during a performance.The instructions of a choreographer were no longer of the first priority and a dancer could   enjoy the decisions taken at the moment. And the dancers and the audience became more involved in the speech. We can agree with Cunningham's ideas or argue them but no doubt this technique is worthy  paying attention and understanding by choreographers not only abroad but also in Russia. 
The picture of dance in the traditional sense is the location and movement of performers on the stage area. Russian ballet-master school has a long tradition of organizing dance movements in space. The treasury of Russian dance art has a huge number of true masterpieces in which the dance picture takes a dominant place. For many centuries choreographers have been developing a huge amount of pictures of dance and dance hits. The pictures were structured and sorted by type.  At different times different choreographers tried to solve the stage space in different ways.
In the era of great classical ballets of a choreographer and reformer Jean-Georges Noverre  the drawing of  the ballet is clearly connected with the baroque style. In the era of romanticism of the first half of the 19th century a technique of air travel was developed and a stage area  acquired additional volume and was solved not only horizontally, but also vertically. Compositions of the corps de ballet in large performances of an academics Marius Petipa filled all the space of the stage. Synchronous movements proliferated in slender ranks of dancers, to the delight of the audience. In the 20s of the 20th century the style of constructivism offered an entirely unexpected division of space for the ballet scene. There were structures on the stage consisting of sites located at different levels, interconnected by stairs and ramps. Modern dance appeared in the beginning of 20th century as opposed to the academic ballet dance and began to solve the problem of space in a fundamentally new way. Some directions of modern dance just left the stage and plunged into a real interaction with the environment. A clear separation of the hall on the audience and performers missed. The very notion of a single point of the viewer's perception disappeared. Movements and dance composition appeared in unexpected angles, missing mechanical harmony of lines and columns of corps de ballet. Dance became an unexpected and unpredictable. The space was filled with the energy of interaction of dancers and viewers.  It came alive and breathing.
With all this, in my opinion, the excessive passion of movement for the sake of movement and liberation of dance from its semantic components reveal the unwillingness of the majority of the public to perception of such ideas and in some cases leads to the weakening of viewers’ interest to this kind of choreography.
In the practical realization of the project I found it interesting to try to combine dance techniques with movement and space of contemporary dance and our experience and traditions of the Russian school of choreography. In a week’s period of time the students had to combine their efforts and make a finished performance. The difference in our approaches was seen already in the preparatory phase, when the project participants were invited to compose a small dance piece on a given topic. Russian students walked from the artistic image taken from Norvegian legend about Norns - goddess of human lives, which served as a primary source, united various episodes of the production. Difference in style and approach to composing a choreographic text also became seen  at the first viewing of fragments. Not everything that had been composed, was subsequently used in the performance. And performing traditions were also different . Our college students are studying various dance techniques. Contemporary technique isstudied, but it is not prevalent, the main subjects were and remain classical dance and folk dance. College students from Outokumpu on the opposite study only contemporary  and related directions.
Initially it was clear that if our students are more or less able to comply with this direction stylistically then any other performance techniques will be a big challenge for Finnish students. But despite all the  obstacles to the implementation of the project, the enthusiasm and interest of the students was evident.
A tremendous preliminary work was done by Yurkki Happala. Dance fragments composed by him formed the basis of the mass dance episodes and became a good educational material for contemporary technology and partnering for the project participants. The Head of dancing line from North Karelian College in Outukumpu Ulla Makinen spent many hours practicing the technique with their students . Episodes, composed and delivered by the Russian side, brought into the performance internal stress and semantic content that is always impressive for the Russian public. Entering the stage of the National Theatre of Karelia we were very worried if Russian viewers understand the absence of specific actions, an abstract figurative representation. And the more pleasant we were to hear a variety of grateful responses of people of different ages. Many of them really became  co-authors of our performance  and they were smart enough to read it in their thoughts and ideas. The performance didn’t leave anyone indifferent  in Petrozavodsk, Segezha and Kostamuksha  despite the fact that most of vieweres faced suvh  performance techniques and organization of a play for the first time. A worthy conclusion of the project were performances in Outukumpu and Kuopio (Finland). Students of our colleges have acquired new performance skills and techniques from staging activities. Friendship arose between Russian and Finnish students undoubtedly will promote creative links between the younger generation of beginners and professional dancers.