Performance.
Dance-making.
Choreography.
Jussi Ulkuniemi has studied contemporary dance in the University of the arts in Helsinki, and movement and performance research in Outokumpu, Finland. They are focusing on studying human connection and identities through movement and visual representation, often guided by an uncanny or queer lens.
In their methods as a dancer, Jussi is inspired by open-ended improvisation frames and tapping into kinesthetic and affective knowledges to find new ways of relating to the audience, and the surrounding environment.
WORKS ↓
on – an improvised solo video on Hetki-Festivaali (2021)
Thinking around intimate touch and queerness, Jussi Ulkuniemi did an improvisatory performance in collaboration with videographer Jaakko Tiikasalo. The solo was performed in a live-stream, as part of Hetki-festivaali 2021. The solo explores, in a dialogue-like manner, different kinds qualities of touching and being touched and it’s implimented power and hierarchies.
YHTÄ MATKAA – Community art project (2019-2020)
Kurouma-collective worked in collaboration with the palliative care unit of Joensuu hospital. The artists disembarked to meet with the palliative care unit’s patients, nurses and caretakers in a community-oriented art project, working with tools such as somatic body-based approaches, photography, performance and long conversations to find approaches examine a life nearing it’s end.
In December 2020, the collective held a photography exhibition and a performance space for the finalization of the project.
Kurouma-collective’s artists:
Mathilda Kauppila, Teo Mattila, Jussi Ulkuniemi
VITAL ACTS 1 – an improvised solo (2020)
“Do what feels vital"– was a core phrase, a guideline written for the creation of an open improvisational solo piece for URBANRAUM performance series 4#, in Berlin. What followed was a complex task-based improvisation, with the audience participating in the unfolding of the performance.
Reading books out loud in polyphony as a collective of narrators, audience members create an immersive soundscape for the dancer. The dancer and the audience enter into a dialogue, where quickly changing landscapes of sounds and stories create constantly shifting collage-like space for the dancer’s affective and abstract movement exploration to get narrated by.
BUILDING/UNBUILDING – solo demo (2019)
A process-oriented exploration into what it means to build and unbuild a body, an identity. A 10 minute solo made as part of studies in the Theatre Academy of Helsinki.
TUNNUSTAMISEN VELVOLLISUUS – solo (2018)
Roughly translates to “obligation of confession”, Tunnustamisen Velvollisuus" is the final student work for Outokumpu movement and performance research studies.
Fragments of borrowed texts varying from the subjective experiences to philosophical views create a loose narrative on the subject of confession. A wild language emerges through the body: how does a body move when it wants to say something, but is too afraid to verbalize it?
Texts from the books:
History of Sexuality – Michel Foucault
Ulos kaapista – Parkkinen Marja-Leena
Violence – Slavoj Žižek
etc.
EMERGENCE – a choreographic study (2018)
As a first choreographic study, Emergence is an exploration to visual and kinaesthetic communication in a performance context with a group of 5 dancers.
How does movement communicate? How to enforce the communicative responsiveness in the performers? How to heighten the sense of communication to the audience? How to create a living complex communicative system that challenges and excites, both the performer and the observer?
Choreographer: Jussi Ulkuniemi
Dancers involved in the process: Aura Savolainen, Ella Seikkala, Jasu Parviainen, Anders Lillhonga, Linda Holma, Laura Kärkäs
This process was a part of my dance education in Outokumpu movement and performance research.