Bitef

JUGGLING ABOUT COMMUNICATION One could well start becoming acquainted with Contemporary circus by seeing this piece of charmingly minute expression but great inventiveness called Keskusteluja by Ville Walo and Kalle Hakkarainen. Walo is a juggler and Hakkarainen a magician, but in thè performance one sees a clever demonstration ofwhat else juggling and magic nowadays can be, Walo's juggling is a dance with an old fashioned land-line phone, for instance. Hakkarainen is not seen pulling rabbits out of a hat either; instead his iliusions are based on playing with video Image. Keskusteluja is a rather ironie ñame for thè performance. There isn't really any dialogue in it at all. It comments intelligently the modern world, in which people exhausted by a tsunami of information all shout out their own things, and no one listens to the other. Communication is my voice sounding higher than anyone else's - in a silent train compartment for instance. Communication and especially the lackof it is presented with exceptional wit particularly in Hakkarainen's video sequences. As in the previous success stories of Walo and Hakkarainen, also in this one Hakkarainen Steps straight into thè video image and out of it. This time we see a televisión in thè video (picture in picture), in which an old soviet film is playing. Hakkarainen tries to make contact with the heroine ofthe film, but he has no luck- because it is a silent movie! Ingenious little details are abundant in Keskusteluja. Walo's innovativeness in developing juggling seemsto be inexhaustible. In the most cunning scene his juggling props consist of a ball, a note block and а реп. The ball flies through the air while Walo tries to sketch it in the block that also is in flight. Spectacular. A juggling scene with a headless doll, whose limbs fly around in all directions, is hilarious. In its atmosphere Keskusteluja is the saddest of all the pieces by Walo and Hakkarainen, but it still doesn't fall too deep in dark waters, on the contrary, at times it is very funny even in its serious appearance.The atmosphere is effectively emphasized bythe mysterious music composed for thè performance by Kimmo Pohjonen and Samuli Kosminen. The stage is built impressively out of two-dimensioned video surfaces into three-dimensioned spaces that change as thè performance proceeds... A visión ofthe impossibility of communication that is presented in the final scene is inconsolable. From the audio track we hear about a million voice mail messages, in which a woman is begging a man to call her. The spectator's patience is tested, but also rewarded. Something pretty mystic is seen, and I dare not reveal it here.

Jussi Tossavainen