Linda Lazarov
Bedroom Dances
Bedroom Dances is a beautiful, delicious, artistic, entertaining and emotional coming-together of dance artist-lyricist Elina Pirinen, third-year dance students of the dance arts programme, dramaturg-costume designer Heidi Väätänen, sound design student Linda Lazarov, lighting design student Rasmus Strandell, and the audience. The work offers the audience — for their pleasure and horror — a wondrous bedroom dance party, carried through the extraordinary bodily immersion and co-experience of 14 dancers, a glowing colour-saturation, and an enchanting through-composed layered undercurrent within a shared field of force. These dancers are the wise magicians of the bedroom and the unconscious. From their generous rituals and those of the stage, from a queer unhinged atmosphere, from sensuality, and from the temperaments flowing through the channels of fingertips, the base of the skull, and the magma centre of the pelvis — there emerge sonic-visual, simultaneous body-psychic dance parties and events, in which eros, humour, fury, folklore, grief, oxygen, the relationship with the audience, and a gaze reaching through time toward the future day- and night-dream, session, and calibrate with one another. The chest cavity of the bedroom thirsts for intimate contact — or for active game-moves against the revulsion that such contact brings forth.
Together we were searching for a redefinition of agency and consent with the audience. My approach to sound was to amplify dancers' voices: hosting, storytelling, whispering and growling. I used sampling, field recordings, drone guitar played by Rasmus, violin, and lots of digital interfaces. I love stitching things together that don't have much in common, there is a jolt in getting suddenly dropped into an new musical world, marked by a fleeting common denominator. These worlds, Bedrooms, had elements of playfulness, horror, sadness, and an ear-ringing silence. During the process I taught myself to 3D-print so I could attach sleeves with small creatures to each microphone.
The work was commissioned by Theatre Academy University of the Arts Helsinki dance department for dance students’ final artistic work for graduation.
Choreographer: Elina Pirinen
Dramaturgical partner and costume designer: Heidi Väätänen
Lighting designer: Rasmus Strandell
Sound designer and composer: Linda Lazarov
Dancers: Ronja Antikainen, Elias Berglund, Anniina Dyster, Matilda Edlund, Valtteri Juvonen, Tuure Kaukua, Sofia Kistol, Vasilliki Kontopoulou, Nella Matleena, Julia Mäkelä, Miska Palsio, Monia Penttinen, Pi Sandås, Anna Saves
Photos: Jussi Ulkuniemi; Illustrations, poster: Linda Lazarov
