My “meditative opera” PIENIÄ TOSIASIOITA (“small truths/facts”, 2024) was transformed into an embodied experience of movement and play – “reactive dance house game” – by choreographer and dancer Saga Elgland (of Saga Elgland Company).

It was presented as two 60-minute performances at Cultural Centre Villa Rana, Jyväskylä FI, on Friday 20 December. Due to the generative nature of the piece, each performance was unique, different.

For the performance, I created a new, immersive multichannel (3D) mix of the composition.

Three rough clips from one of the performances, recorded with a phone camera by one of the featured poets, Vesa Lahti*:

PIENIÄ TOSIASIOITA (2024) is a generative sound and poetry composition in which texts from nine Jyväskylä-based poets intersect, collide, become pollinated and stratified, disintegrate – and form new, accidental, momentary assemblages. This is accompanied by discreet music created from sounds recorded in the environment surrounding the performance space. The voices and textual fragments of the poets as well as the musical motifs keep unfolding in a state of constant permutation, quietly self-organising and -changing – like a river that flows, an urban space in motion, or a forest following the seasons.

The composition was originally realised as a site-specific installation at Taavettilan riihi (Taavettila barn) – the oldest building in the Jyväskylä city area and located within the Jyväskylä University Botanical Garden (next to Villa Rana). For more information about the installation, please see my previous entry here.

Choreography and dance: Saga Elgland

Music and sound: Ilpo Jauhiainen

Light and stage design, technical realisation: Lasse Saari, Timo Hanhisalo, Toivo Niemi

Production: Keski-Suomen Tanssin Keskus ry in collaboration with Keski-Suomen Kirjailijat ry and Kulttuuritalo Villa Rana

The featured poets:

Olli-Pekka Tennilä
Suvi Valli
Kristian Blomberg
Riikka Simpura
Petri Turunen
Anniina Louhivuori
Niklas Salmi
Riitta Cankoçak
Vesa Lahti

* I was unable to attend and document the performances properly myself as I was in Belgium at the time.