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April 06, 2006
New York reviews of Hunt
John Rockwell, The New York Times, March 30, 2006
Tero Saarinen Company From Finland Dances in New York
The Tero Saarinen Company from Finland made its New York debut in 1998. It was welcomed warmly, but for whatever reason, it took eight years to return. Its opening at the Joyce Theater on Tuesday night was an occasion for some terrific dancing, building happily from strength to strength over the three pieces on the program.....
...None of this would have mattered much without Mr. Saarinen's choreography, which looked constantly alive and original. It was at its very best in the final piece, "Hunt," a 2002 solo for himself. Audaciously set to Stravinsky's "Sacre du Printemps" (in Esa-Pekka Salonen's fleet, intense recording), its overt intentions — something about confronting the depredations of age — mattered less than the eerie atmosphere Mr. Saarinen created. His figure, initially dressed in a white sarong, looked more hunted than hunting. He often moved in spasmodic increments, like a strobe effect without the strobe lighting. That came later, in the equally powerful lighting and projections of Marita Liulia. The second half of the dance found Mr. Saarinen in an alien world of Ms. Liulia's design, with ghostly clouds and faint gray projections on the back wall. The cloud became a skirt or a tutu — Mr. Saarinen as male swan? — onto which were projected vivid, bizarre, swirling, flashing, broken fragments of bodies, above all a recurrent eye. At the very end, he leapt and leapt, each leap caught in midair with a flash of white light.
The whole thing was quite extraordinary, a powerful match for the music. It made one anticipate Mr. Saarinen's date at Jacob's Pillow this summer and fervently hope he makes it back to New York sooner than another eight years.
Lisa Rinehart Dance View Times
A Reluctant Star, Sort Of. . .
Tero Saarinen has kivekset (that's Finnish for hutzpah—in a manner of speaking.) Fortunately, he also has talent and the smarts to choose gifted collaborators. Already recognized internationally as a powerful performer (although I'm afraid he's allowed himself to be described in the program as "one of the most brilliant dancers of his generation"), Saarinen brings to New York a tasting platter of his own choreography....
The star of the evening, however, (and this is where the hutzpah comes in) is unquestionably Saarinen himself in his solo "Hunt," a multimedia tour de force set to nothing less than Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring." Dance history is littered with attempts to realize this magnificent score, but Saarinen is startlingly successful by teaming up with multimedia artist, Marita Liula, as well as costume designer, Erika Turunen, and again, Kunttu. The dance unfolds with the fitful reluctance of early spring and is infused with references to the Diaghilev era. There are bits of Anna Pavovla in "The Dying Swan," as well as archaic positions reminiscent of Nijinsky in his "Afternoon of a Faun." Saarinen has the delicate rawness of a butterfly fresh out of the chrysalis. About midway into the dance, a structure resembling an exploded sheaf of papers fashioned into a tutu descends from the rafters and Saarinen wriggles into it. Mirroring the wild dynamics of Stravinsky's score, Liula's projections begin to flash across skin and dress alike. The images range from hypnotic circular tracings to pulsating collages of barely discernible, but somehow disturbing, objects. Rapid fire editing catches the breath and pulls us into Stravinsky's primal cacophany. If you happen to be a film buff, the net effect is similar to that of the 1929 surrealistic film "Un Chien Andalou," by Salvadore Dali and Luis Bunuel. It's heady stuff and Saarinen summons his considerable strength and feline grace to the task of compressing the miracle of birth, transformation and death into this 40 minute spectacle. The dance culminates with strobe lights repeatedly freezing Saarinen in space (in perfect unity with the score) and ends with the inevitable final collapse. What could be a mess of theatrics is instead an original and stirring visual realization of Stravinsky's emotional intent. Bravo!
Deborah Jowitt, The Village Voice, April 4th, 2006
Siege of Light
Finnish troupe returns after an eight-year absence
Tero Saarinen, the remarkable Finnish choreographer-dancer, isn't the first to choreograph Stravinsky's Rite of Spring as a solo. But he may be the first to internalize the composer's driving rhythms rather than stepping them out, as did Molissa Fenley in her 1988 State of Darkness and Nijinsky's hordes in his 1913 sacrificial ritual. In Hunt, Saarinen's torso and arms map aspirations and assaults. He's not the hunter but the hunted—by the specter of age and death or by the onslaught of contemporary civilization or both. He doesn't attempt to ride Stravinsky's tempest; he endures its pummeling.
His vision owes much to lighting designer Mikki Kunttu; Marita Liulia, who created slides and other multimedia effects; Jacke Kastelli, programmer; and costume designer Erika Turunen. When we first glimpse Saarinen, he is backlit, his outline glowing as he advances unsteadily, dragging around first one foot, then the other. He's bare chested and wears a white skirt. His only onstage audience is a semicircle of lamps set on the floor.
Watching Saarinen in Hunt, you might not guess he was once a soloist in the Finnish National Ballet (although that company's repertory is eclectic and contemporary). You might, however, deduce that he studied butoh in Japan with Kazuo Ohno. He performs the first part of Hunt as if listening for a call, his body arching, his arms outspread. There are echoes of Fokine's Dying Swan in his attempts to rise from the floor, but his "wings" are often distorted and pulled painfully far behind him.
Posted by marita at April 6, 2006 06:09 PM