Choreographer´s comments
Green armchair is a dance piece about the toughness of rest – of the difficulty of permitting it.
A kind of manifest against unnecessary movement. The piece explores the borderline between stillness and movement. What is the motion of immobility? – a falling thought. Green armchair is a metaphor for waiting – a wait filled with utmost tension, ready to explode, contrasted by orgastic eruptions.
A central theme of the piece is soloism within a quartet – or a quintet, accounting the solo cellist.
The piece has been built up on individual work with each dancer, after which the movement sequences were assigned and joined together. The movement sentences started to carry the name of the performer. It is indefinitely interesting to see what happens when a certain movement sentence moves from one dancer to another; the central meaning is retained, but several side meanings are born alongside of it – a movement travels from body to another.
Green armchair contemplates time: The act of sitting down equals letting go of time, an exhalation. When is the moment to move forward? The answer will emerge in the Green armchair, at the last moment.
Working team on version 2010
Choreography and consept: Petri Kekoni
Composer: Olli Koskelin
Light design: Ilkka Paloniemi
Costume design: Monika Hartl (Original design Mimmi Resman)
Production for 4 dancers (2 female+2 male) and a violin cellist
Dance: Anne Hiekkaranta, Carl Knif, Jukka Tarvainen, Paula Tuovinen
Violin cellist: Sami Mäkelä
Set design: Petri Kekoni, Mimmi Resman
Soundtrack realized by: Timo Muurinen
Production: Petri Kekoni Company and Zodiak – Center of new dance
World premiere 4.4.2002
Reprise 12.3.2010 at Cable Factory, Pannuhalli, Helsinki
Guest performances
- 2011 Danzalborde dance festival, Valparaiso, Chile
- 2011 Full Moon Dance Festival, Pyhäjärvi, Finland
- 2010 No ballet international choreography competition – 2nd Price / Ludwigshafen, Germany
- 2010 Tanssin aika festival, Jyväskylä, Finland
Review quotes
”Petri Kekoni’s dance works present themselves as refreshingly original in the Finnish context. The movement and its relationship to the body and the music create dance works for which it is hard to find relatives…The Green Armchair challenges the audience in an unrushed viewing experience.”
– Piia Ahonen, Tanssi
”… The material has a dry humor and clear intelligens. Compositions are very subtle. I value Kekoni’s way of handling movement and loading it with subtle and stripped down meanings. Music and movement merge together and there is a deep understanding between both art forms.”
– Annika Tudeer, HBL
“Merging together and diverging of the multidimensional and rich in movement choreography is mathematically accurate”. Pictures: Uupi Tirronen
– Merja Koskiniemi, Aamulehti
