Iho-Skinless | photo: Heli Rekula | in the photo: Sanna Kekäläinen
IHO – SKINLESS (2001)
Traces of Culture on our Skin
IHO – Skinless is a solo work by the artistic leader and choreographer of the company, Sanna Kekäläinen. According to the traditions of the internationally acknowledged theatre this piece is a unique point of view on the actual subject. The work was characterised as meditative work for the spectator, deep dive into cultural identity via physical metamorphoses, animal like study of movement, cornucopia of ideas and warmly humorous and humane work by the critiques.
IHO – Skinless continues the themes Sanna Kekäläinen dealt already with her solo work My sword has seven edges and three knots: facing the foreign cultures and communication between different cultures. This piece was one of the first consciously multi-cultural works in Finland, and it was reconstructed for a Retrospective-series commissioned by Kiasma Theatre – Museum of Contemporary Art in Helsinki. The theme is dealt also literally in the epilogue text of IHO – Skinless by Kari Hukkila, that is in Sami language spoken by the ethnic minority in Lapland, in the northern Scandinavia.
Sanna Kekäläinen tells about the thematics of IHO – Skinless: “I think about an animal, the difference between an animal and a human being and on the other hand the identification of a human being with an animal…this leads to the ethnic cultures…to their different kind of relations towards nature…to the dimensions of human identity…to the layers of human…to the arrogance of western people towards nature…I’m looking for traces of culture on our skin.”
Choreography and dance: Sanna Kekäläinen
Costume designer: Riitta Röpelinen
Light designer: Matti Jykylä
Visited:
V International Lublin Dance Theatre Festival, Poland, November 2001
Institut Finlandais, Paris, France, November 2001
New Baltic Dance ’02 -festival in Vilna, Lithuania April 2002
Germany, Düsseldorf, Global Dance 2002 / Internationale Tanzmesse NRW, August 2002
Les Plateaux 2005, France, September 2005
Iho-Skinless | photo: Heli Rekula | in the photo: Sanna Kekäläinen
Iho-Skinless | photo: Heli Rekula | in the photo: Sanna Kekäläinen
Iho-Skinless | photo: Heli Rekula | in the photo: Sanna Kekäläinen