The latest edition of the annual Helsinki-based Moving in November festival featured Venice Biennale awardees, along with a show co-created by Finnish teenagers. As usual, taking over city venues outside the local dance cradle Tanssin Talo (Dance House), the festival attempted to spread the word of experimental dance during the darkest time of the year. Featuring, among others, internationally renowned pieces like Alessandro Sciarroni’s Save the Last Dance for Me, Marlene Monteiro Freitas’ Bacchae – Prelude to a Purge, and Cherish Menzo’s DARKMATTER, the program managed to formulate a diverse approach to dance, both culturally and aesthetically. Here, though, I take a closer look at women’s stories that were danced through the program, discussing three pieces that captivated my attention the most.
I’m on fire
Venus by Janina Rajakangas and her magical collaborators made me cry both times I saw it. It was premiered in 2022 during the Baltic Circle festival at Villa Salin, run by Finnish feminist association Naisiasialiitto Unioni, and shown again in Mad House at the last Moving in November edition. Starting as a dialogue between a mother and her teenage daughter, the piece grew into a touching and forceful performance by four teenagers (Natalia Foster, Mea Holappa, Seela Merenluoma, and Volta Rajakangas-Moussaoui), reflecting on the issues of young girls’ eroticisation and how their self-image is affected by beauty norms and digital communication.
Developed through thorough research in collaboration with the performers, the piece unfolds between two modes of girls’ self-expression: one shaped by visual culture dominated by the male gaze, encompassing both classical references (such as the nod to Botticelli) and more recent popular and digital influences; and another, more raw, sincere, and unpredictable. Both modes are part of the process of discovering one’s subjectivity as a girl and a woman, but the latter requires more support and courage to become visible and claim its space. Instead of merely serving as a site of representation, the entire piece functions as a safe space for these raw expressions to emerge and become public.
Perhaps that’s why Venus was performed in cosy and ‘almost private’ settings both times: it feels as if we are invited into someone’s living room to witness an intimate ritual among four girlfriends. Seated in a circle on the floor around burning candles, they quietly begin reciting the qualities of a ‘good girl’: ‘Honest, gentle, kind, receptive, quiet, humble,’ the turn passing from one to another, creating a magical spell. As their voices grow louder and more forceful, it becomes evident that the ‘good girl’ qualities aren’t inherently ‘bad’; they only stifle individuality when imposed and used to control and limit self-expression. By playing with different modes of vocalisation, it seems the girls take control of these qualities, using them when appropriate and setting them aside when not needed.
The ritual unfolds into singing and dancing. ‘Hello darkness, my old friend’ from Simon & Garfunkel’s Sound of Silence is the first line performed by the girls, holding together the truthfulness of teenage sorrows. At the same time, it carries the touch of ‘posing’ for the media – as a ‘sad girl’ image can be one of those ready-made and desirable online. It’s hard to distinguish between ‘being real’ and performing what’s desired, especially in those gentle years before ‘coming of age.’ We tend to become whatever we are asked to perform and often find comfort, empowerment, and joy in ‘fitting in’ until we feel the urge to express ourselves differently, and suddenly we’re not accepted anymore.
The dramaturgy of Venus oscillates between these polarities, as the girls seem to find joy in ‘showing off’ when posing for an imaginary camera. Recognisable ‘cool girl’ poses from teenage posters encompass different acceptable ways of being an adolescent female: heart-shaped fingers, kissing postures, punkish middle-finger ‘fuck you’ gestures turns out you can make a dance out of these signs, of these symbols.
What pushes the performers out of those learnt modes of self-expression is improvised dancing, touch, screaming and stories of harassment spoken out loud. We see them exceeding the imposed behaviours when they get together and gently rest on one another while singing. Or when their dancing becomes furious and disorganised (the powerful final solo by Natalia Foster left me trembling). Or when their recitals grow into screaming. Or when they get ‘Angry, dopey, dramatic, problematic, intimidating, trouble-making, delusional, not funny, too much, too little, shit-faces, slow-paced, like everyone, like no one, crazy, loud, unstable’ – when the spell changes its tune.
And then the Venus appears.
