Ulla Koivisto, the mother of all wells

Experienced choreographer Ulla Koivisto has thus far stayed at the Saari Residence three times and has succeeded in fruitfully fulfilling the concept of the Well as the contacts she made during her stays have resulted in several multidisciplinary projects. In fact, you could call Ulla “The Mother of All Wells.”

An Unconventional Dance Group

Dancer Satu Rekola had been granted a residency for the fall of 2009 to complete a dance performance. Ulla Koivisto came to the Residence to work on material for Satu’s solo entitled In the Room Helsinki. Their collaboration unfortunately fell short due to Satu suddenly falling ill. Ulla, however, was not left to sit on her hands even though she had now been left without a dancer.

“When Satu left, I began to think about what it was that combines artists of such different fields: it’s that energy we use to work!”

From the other artists at the Residence, Ulla formed a dance group that would meet at the mansion’s stone barn a couple of times a week to learn the Alexander technique and to talk about physicality. Even though the artists were shy at first, they felt Ulla’s rehearsals to be fun and necessary.

In addition to the rehearsals at the barn, Ulla challenged the artists to walk around the Saari estate using routes they normally would not use and moving in ways they normally would not move. One of the artists carrying out this task was poet Miia Toivio who ended up walking a circle to the mansion’s parking lot. Inspired by the task, Toivio wrote the poem Kehä ("Circle").

“In the end, the artists formed such a good and cohesive dance group that when I asked them to, for example, turn around with their hand, they all turned in the same direction and even at the same time,” Ulla explains laughing.

A Dialogue between a Poet and a Dancer

 When Satu Rekola returned to the Saari Residence from her sick leave, another close collaboration began with the young poet Jonimatti Joutsijärvi who was also staying at the Residence.

“Jonimatti and Satu were both fascinated with the unique environment of the Residence and so we began to experiment with them. For example, Satu would move and Jonimatti would read his texts in the mansion’s cellar. We also tried an exercise where Satu would perform an improvised dance for about an hour and Jonimatti would simultaneously write about what he saw.”

A rock formation on the Residence’s parking lot served as inspiration and the threesome continued experimenting in the vicinity of the rocks, beside them and on top of them.

“We played around with those rocks until one Monday morning at brunch some Japanese guy told us that the rocks on the parking lot were his rocks.”

As it turns out, the man in question was the Japanese artist Mineo Kuroda who had come to the Saari Residence to complete his stone art work, Wa – way to relate. Another collaboration was born, this time with Mineo who drew in his reliefs images of Satu dancing in the stone barn.

The collaboration with Jonimatti and Satu worked so well that they decided to create a performance that would be based on their experiments at the Saari Residence. After their stay at the Residence, they locked themselves away inside Ulla’s house in Kemiö to prepare the performance. And so Vaeltava Valo (“Roaming Light”), a dialogue between a dancer and poet, was born and was premiered in June 2010 at the Living Room city art event in Turku.   

Sharing and Trust between Artists

In the fall of 2010, Ulla Koivisto returned to the Saari Residence having this time received an individual residency. Ulla and the other resident artists quickly got to know each other and became a close group from day one. The group wanted to share their work habits with each other and so, the doors of the artist’s workspaces were almost always open to their colleagues.

“You had to come up with a separate code for wanting to work in private and to focus on your project in peace. That’s when the door to a workspace was closed. Usually, however, doors were kept wide open,” Ulla smiles.

Artists staying at the Residence that fall were particularly interested in each other’s work processes and projects. And so they thought up the idea of a weekly collective dining moment where the artists could share their work methods, discuss their thoughts on art and help solve any problems troubling their colleagues.

Sharing, however, is not self-evident and thrives only when everyone is willing to do so.

“Sharing requires openness and a great trust in people. People need to feel brave enough to be who they are. I feel safe in this environment here at the Saari Residence. I can be myself here,” confides Ulla.

A Visual Score

During her individual residency, Ulla became acquainted with the visual artist Kimmo Ylönen who lives in the Turku archipelago and who had come to the Residence to create a set of wooden sculptures for a future exhibition. Time spent together fostered ideas of a collaboration. The idea for a new art work was born when poet Jonimatti Joutsijärvi stopped by the Residence to visit Ulla. Together they watched a video of the summer’s Vaeltava Valo performance which inspired them to plan a new multidisciplinary art work. An important source of inspiration was, again, Mineo Kuroda’s work of stone art.

“Kimmo, Jonimatti, Satu and I are planning a work that we call a visual score. Our intension is to collaborate with residents of the archipelago of Länsi-Turunmaa to create a dance event situated in the scenery of the Saari Residence.”

Participants of this visual score will be offered a one-month course during which they will be familiarized with their self-image and personal history through different methods of movement. The performances will be filmed and the consequent video material will be worked into independent dance videos. The visual score is a format that will be left for the local residents. The hope is that the performances created will remain in the region to live a life of their own. The best case scenario would be that they inspire the locals that participated to independently arrange similar new events.

“My job is to create trust in the local performers so that they learn to trust their own movement. The purpose of the performance is not, however, to perform a forced Ulla choreography,” says Ulla with a smile.

The premiere of the visual score is to be held near Mineo Kuroda’s Wa stone work at the Saari Residence in the spring of 2012. The work will also be performed in Norrskata and Houtskär, for example.

The near future, however, holds a different collaboration with media artist Andy Best whose exhibition at Helsinki’s Media Centre Lume in the spring of 2011 features a dance performance created by Ulla. Andy and Ulla also met at the Saari Residence even if their collaboration took flight only after their residencies. Once you have found your way to the Well, it is also easy to find your way back.

Ulla Koivisto teaching Alexander Technique to the residence artists