Dance festival opens with experiments in choreography

The second Independent Dance Festival in Tallinn opened with a performance series exploring the boundaries of choreography through collaborations across disciplines. In the first entry of her festival diary for ERR, Grete Liina Tuuksam reflects on the series, “Choreography+”.

This year’s festival takes audiences on a journey through time and space, with events at several locations around Tallinn. Its programme includes Estonian and international performances, club nights, discussions and workshops. The selected works all seek, in some way, to broaden the meaning of choreography.

The festival’s central theme is the joy of being together. The Independent Dance Stage, a contemporary dance venue, has long been a leading force in Estonia’s dance scene, but the festival is still establishing itself: this is only its second year. Tuuksam writes that it is admirable that the venue found the resources to organise a ten-day festival at a time when funding for private theatres is poor. Creating a space where the dance community can gather and experience dance together is itself worth celebrating.

At the festival’s opening, Maria Solei Järvet, who leads TantsuRuum, said that a space for dance can feel like a hug. Tuuksam hopes this year’s programme will offer audiences an embrace that transcends time and space, as well as new ways to understand and consider choreography.

Before setting off on that journey, the audience gathered at the Independent Dance Stage’s home venue for the premiere of the second instalment of “Choreography+”. The series explores the boundaries of choreography through collaborations between different fields. Three pairs presented short performances during the evening. Each included an experienced choreographer and a partner from another profession; together, they explored the common ground and differences between their fields.

The first pair to test choreography’s limits were Britt Kõrsmaa and Ülle Kirss, an ear, nose and throat doctor and lecturer in phoniatrics. Their work, “Foniatrix”, shifted movement inside the dancer’s body. Instead of the familiar sight of a performer moving their body as a whole, Kirss guided Kõrsmaa through vocal exercises that moved her throat muscles.

The audience watched through a miniature camera that Kirss inserted through the dancer’s nose. Tuuksam describes the performance as compelling in its abjectness: the camera showed the throat’s blood vessels, saliva bubbles and movements. The introspective work considers choreography as something that can happen in places normally invisible to us.

In “Lahenduskäikudes”, Elle Viies and writer Jan Kaus used pseudo-mathematical language to set out and explain a formula for the nature of dance. Viies is a master’s student in literary studies at the University of Tartu, making the pair, in Tuuksam’s view, the most logically matched of the series. Rather than stretch the definition of choreography, their performance delved into the concept.

The piece combined sequences of movement with text, which together formed a meaningful whole for the audience to interpret. Tuuksam felt the pair had developed larger ideas than the short “Choreography+” format could contain. The format did not best suit the dense but engaging material, she writes, though the artists had built a strong foundation with potential for future collaborations.

The third performance, “skeit skeit linna”, brought together Anumai Raska and Lauri Tähe, a skateboarder, musician, photographer and videographer. Their work met dance and street art at their shared centre.