Tero Saarinen Company @ The Joyce

Above: from Tero Saarinen’s Morphed; photo by Günther Gröger

~ Author: Oberon

Friday October 20th, 2017 – Tero Saarinen Company, one of Europe’s premiere contemporary dance companies, presenting Morphed, an all-male work, at The Joyce.

With a running time of just over one hour, Morphed is performed by seven dancers of varying ages and physiques on a truly fascinating set designed by Bessie-award winner Mikki Kunttu, who also supervised the excellent lighting. Finnish fashion designer Teemu Muurimäki’s black & white costumes ideally completed the visual setting. While the eye was constantly intrigued, the ear could revel in music drawn from three works by Finnish composer Esa-Pekka Salonen. Blending all these elements into a cohesive whole made for one of the most satisfying evenings of dance I’ve encountered in the past two decades.

The sound of the French horn (my instrument!) commenced even as the lights went down immediately seizing the imagination, conjuring visions of both the dawn and of the hunt. This gorgeous music is Salonen’s Concert étude for solo horn (composed 2000). In a space surrounded on three sides by hanging ropes, the seven dancers – all in black hoods – simply walk and walk; sometimes their walking seems casual and free, at other times more regimented. The scene brightens and the dancers appear in silhouette.

The hoods come off, and new music takes over – from Salonen’s Foreign Bodies (2001) – which has a kozmic energy.  The hanging ropes become part of the choreography as the men walk among them, gathering them, grasping them for support, sending them flying. Solo and duet passages unfold, observed (or ignored) by the men who are not dancing at the moment. One especially powerful pas de deux climaxes with one man dragging the other about by the shirt on his back.  

Suddenly the music goes haywire and things get wild; the dancers rush about until calm is restored and the music becomes slow and other-worldly. Then, linking arms, the men begin to swirl like a turning wheel. The hanging ropes are activated, creating a mass effect of contrasted motions in the space: really impressive!

Silence falls, and the agitato of Salonen’s violin concerto accompanies a lighting shift to blue. A solo is danced, which morphs into a trio. Bits of clothing start to come off. Then golden light settles in, and a stylized duet, with motifs reminiscent of Nijinsky’s Faune, is yet another compelling passage. The dancers, some of them now shirtless, continue to move, to strike poses, or to repose upon the floor as the curtain falls.

I think the highest praise I can give to Saarinen’s Morphed is that, when it ended, I was ready to sit thru it again.

~ Oberon