Muodonruodoksia

• Choreography and Dance: Pirjo Yli-Maunula
• Violinist: Jari Suomalainen
• Script, direction: Pekko Koskinen
• Production: Pelikarnevaalit / Pekko Koskinen
• In co-operation: Flow Productions / Pirjo Yli-Maunula
• Premiere: 30 November, 2007 Nuku Centre, Oulu
• Duration: 90 min.

Branches…transforms dances and music into game pieces, composing playful frames through which the performative elements are improvised. Also thrown to the whim of play: beginnings, endings, authorships and methods of experience. The piece moves from one environment to another, reacting to its space as if to a game board: building strategies, interpretations, being playful of its presence, wherever it may be.

This dance work is experimental, interactive. Yli-Maunula has the ability to transform herself. There is something of a nature child in her and power in her dance. The violin of Suomalainen is simply fascinating – he sets entire personality in the game.

Laura Veikkolainen, Kaleva 2.12.2007

AUTHORS:

Pekko Koskinen

Pekko Koskinen currently works as a Game Designer at Playsign. Previously he was a member of the game research team Ludograft (University of Oulu, Finland), from the projects of which he received a number of merits, such as the 1st prize of the category at the Independent Games Festival (San Francisco, 2007), ans a finalist of the same competition a year earlier (San Jose). In the awarded projects, he worked as a Game Concept Designer and a Sound Designer. He has also been the Vice-Chair of Finnish Association of Verbal Arts) and has taught creative writing across Finland, emphasizing the possibilties of play in textual expression.

His other works include two play-structured art exhibitions, Imageries on a Game Board and The Sense of Verity (Cultural Centre Valve, Oulu, 2006 and 2007). In the spring of 2008 he held a keynote speech in the Independent Games Summit of the world´s largest game conference (GDC), discussing playful approaches to everyday reality.

Lately he has began to doubt his personal role in the world. Wouldn´t the most rational move be to give up one´s personal self and transform into a pure operator, weaving things within a playful glimmer?

Jari Suomalainen

Jari Suomalainen is a violinist at the Oulu Symphony Orchestra.

PERFORMANCE HISTORY:

Premiere:

Cultural Centre Valve, Oulu 30 November, 2007

Tanssia Tyrkyllä- festival, Cultural Centre Valve, Oulu, 21 September, 2008 at 5pm