Dancing the grey clouds away

Jenni Kivelä is one of Finland's most original artists, with an open and sincere relationship to the world. The characters and world she creates in her work are similar to that in the films of Aki Kaurismäki, where the ambience is not hopeless, just slightly melancholic.

One of the main causes of melancholy is insecurity in love: will it last or not? In Jenni Kivelä‘s piece “Master Detectives,“ commissioned for the Kuopio Dance Festival in collaboration with Jorma Uotinen and the Zodiac Center for new dance in Helsinki, one young lady plays dead in order to make sure that someone out there will miss her. It begins like a murder mystery, with three people going through the belongings of a dead woman, but all is not what it seems at first glance. “Master Detectives“ appears initially to be a crime story but is actually an investigation of love. What is love, how do we experience it? Kivelä poses many questions and comments on the banal things that preoccupy us, like lovers making your coffee too strong or always leaving the lavatory door open ... She has a neo-naive style of presenting characters and their thoughts. Never simple or stupid, the game is always open-minded.
Kivelä‘s ...