Dancer-choreographer Jyrki Karttunen (b. 1969) has been one of the leading Finnish male dancers for the last ten years, ever since Jorma Uotinen took the young 20-year-old into the Helsinki Dance Company in 1989. Karttunen stayed in the company for four years, performing in works by Uotinen, Marjo Kuusela, Tommi Kitti and Carolyn Carlson. In 1993 he choose to become a freelancer - an unusual decision for Finnish dancers due to the uncertain career prospects this entails. But his decision was the right one, and he has never been short of work. Since 1995 he has been working increasingly with his own choreographies. In 1996 Karttunen founded Nomadi Productions with Alpo Aaltokoski, Arja Raatikainen and Katri Soini.

During the interview, Karttunen seems more serious than usual. In his own words, he is suffering from "starting apathy", as he has just begun rehearsals for a new work that will be premiered in February 2004.

-Starting work on a new piece usually involves a moment when you realise the enormous workload that lies ahead, and it is very tempting to simply walk away, Karttunen sighs.

-Working as a choreographer means that the future is totally unknown - you just have to believe in intuition and trust that something will come out of it eventually.

Karttunen's dance background is in classical ballet, but he says that he received his real training with the Helsinki Dance Company (formerly known as The Helsinki City Theatre Dance Company), under Jorma Uotinen's supervision.

-When it comes to dance, Jorma is a kind of father figure to me because he offered me a job when I was very inexperienced, explains Karttunen.

Since those days Karttunen has grown as a dancer by performing in works by choreographers who represent vastly different styles and techniques. The choreographers he has worked with include such names as Sanna Kekäläinen, Arja Raatikainen and Kirsi Monni. His own works, however, have a clearly recognisable and personal movement language.

-Naturally, all the choreographers I have worked with have had an influence on what I have become. I have never trained in any one technique so much that it could be said that it has had a particular impact on me

Sculpting an inner vision

Karttunen's breakthrough as a choreographer came in 1998 with Digital Duende, a compact duet for two men that has literally toured its way around the globe. It contains all the features that are typical of Karttunen's art: an atmosphere that balances open emotion with close-mouthed reserve; a fluid and meandering movement language; and a polished visual image. The visual aspect of Digital Duende is, however, minimalistic, as the work was designed for touring.

Karttunen's works all feature the same point of departure.

-Everything I do starts from one core statement, which then varies from one work to the next. When this is verbalised, my aim sounds rather banal and superficial, but somehow I want to make the world a better place, Karttunen explains hesitatingly.

-The main point is that I try to construct my own inner world in my works; the aim of every work is to sculpt a perfect representation of an inner vision. In that sense I am continuously working on the same work of art!

Despite this, Karttunen's works do not have a common message.

-Rather, I aim for a certain overall atmosphere, and to leave a certain after-taste which I hope will lead the spectator to look at the world and the prerequisites of happiness at least to some extent in the same way that I do, Karttunen explains.

The recognisable movement language is born of the common starting point and Karttunen's identity as a dancer.

-For me, movement is a much clearer way of existing than for example speaking; dancing is thinking through, or with, movement. I start working on a new piece by trying to shed light on my first intuitive vision, which is then gradually transformed into abstract bodily forms, says Karttunen.

-When I started as a choreographer, I thought that the most difficult thing would be creating movement. The hardest work, however, is picking exactly the right movements from the mass of material that comes out of the rehearsals.

Karttunen points out that his choreographies often seem to develop according to their own logic, after he has managed to find the right first movement. The entire choreography for e.g. Under (2000) grew out of a single abruptly interrupted bow, whereas Digital Duende started from the gradual decay of the human body.

Streams of movement and consciousness

In addition to Karttunen's rather theoretical aims, he also has more concrete starting points. The concepts of "form" and "sculpting" recur in his vocabulary. A typical feature of Karttunen's movement is that all the phases of movement are treated equally, which directs the viewer's attention to the moving body in its entirety rather than individual details. Karttunen's dancing could be characterised as bodily sculpture. He talks about the particular mode of bodily existence that the movement requires.

-The important elements in my work are the route that the dancing body carves in space and the fact that the body is always on stand-by. It could also be called readiness. The point is that the possibility of change is ever-present: the movement could change at any given moment.

Anyone who watches Karttunen dancing will see this principle come alive. A focused and slow, measured flow of movement sequences, which can come to a sudden halt with a seemingly effortless jump, are typical of Karttunen's works. He dances these sequences in a relaxed yet alert manner; his movements are as soft as the tentacles of an octopus, silently traversing the seabed. This kind of idling enables another typical element: not many dancers can stop moving so abruptly, without any hint of the physical force involved in stopping, and then carry on from exactly the same place they left off. It produces the same effect as someone dancing electric boogie in slow motion.

The vast and slow series of movements in which the rondes and arabesques performed by the feet have a particularly central role alternates with fast and humorous as well as clumsily jammed movements. We are again witnessing the connection between dancing and thinking.

-My movements imitate the way thoughts progress. Not all everyday thoughts are immortal; there is plenty transitory and unnecessary chitchat.

Karttunen talks about imitating reality, even though his visually polished works are not realistic. Rather, the elements that seem "meaningful" alternate with elements that have in general been labelled trivial or meaningless.

A fairy in video wonderland

In Karttunen's work Fairy (2002), the so-called meaningful movements and forms are dominated by a slow and focused movement language, with positions and hand and foot movements reminiscent of ballet vocabulary. This is counter-balanced by abundant references to the movement language of e.g. musicals and disco dancing. This work differs from Karttunen's previous pieces in that the principal aim of the movement is to create a character, in this case a mischievous and touching fairy, which gives the work a particularly human quality despite its setting in the surreal world of fairytales.

In Fairy, Karttunen used video on a large scale for the first time to form part of the stage visuals. The work owes just as much of its charm to Kimmo Karjunen's videos as it does to the enchanting fairy figure. The four transparent video walls multiply Fairy Karttunen by four, allowing him to dance with himself. Karttunen and Karjunen experimented along similar lines in the solo piece Meryl (2000), which was made for Sari Lakso. Karttunen later took the fairy that appeared in that video and gave it the leading role in his next work.

-Before Fairy I didn't realise that using video could be so fascinating. When you use it in this way it really introduces a whole new aspect to the stage.

-I have always been intrigued by the contradictions that exist between the real and the unreal aspects of any performance: a performance is always a copy and performing it is essentially a sham. But when you record this copy on video, the result is somehow genuine, he muses.

Karttunen's view is that introducing video to the artificial reality of the stage has the odd effect of making the performance more honest. The performer on the video is genuinely artificial, which reveals the artificial nature of the entire act of performing. This in turn means that the performance need no longer claim to be real.

-Of course video also means that you can use movements that would be impossible for a real dancer. Video can bring absurd and surreal elements to the work, which I like. Now I will be able to fulfil my secret fantasy - a one-man chorus line scene!

The miracle of other human beings

The new work, which is still at a very early stage, will probably continue both Fairy's themes and the same kind of use of video.

-It will be a work that wonders. The dancers and I started by imagining that we had an extra-terrestrial friend who had to be told from scratch what it is like to exist in this world. For example, what is a human being? What is eyesight? What is empathy? In other words, learning how to be, and learning the miracle of other human beings.

Karttunen's starting-apathy is partly explained by the fact that he will spend almost twelve months creating the new work and experimenting with working methods. Another new aspect of the forthcoming piece, which has the working title 'Outer Space', will be the dancers themselves, none of whom have featured in any of Karttunen's previous works.

-In the past I have always started by working alone at the rehearsal studio, looking for movements and forms. Thinking on my own, in other words. The dancers have had no knowledge of the origin of any of the movements, but this time they will be a part of the process from the very beginning.

-I firmly believe that if dancers can find a collective way of thinking, a certain world view, a common understanding of things and a bodily rhythm, they will also find the same forms for their movements, Karttunen continues enthusiastically.

It seems that any starting-apathy is already evaporating as Karttunen begins to sculpt his inner vision.

This article was originally published in Finnish Dance in Focus 2003.