La Folia @2016

About

La Folia @2016 is a reconstruction of Liisa Pentti’s choreography La Folia Melancolia from 1993. La Folia Melancolia was based on the memoirs of Albert Speer, Adolph Hitler’s minister of defense, and the human spirit of survival. The central theme of the memoirs is Speer’s attempt to understand what happened and to write his own version of the events. At the same time, the memoirs offer a revealing description of fundamental paradoxes concerning the hunger for power, the pleasure of power, the longing for community and the manipulation of community.

La Folia Melancolia depicted the legacy of war and its horror and anxiety – in an individual, a woman.  It was a dance ritual where slow and repetitive patterns created a movement landscape amidst the ruins. La Folia Melancolia was performed at the Cable Factory in Helsinki in 1993, by Liisa Pentti and Katariina Vähäkallio. The soundspace was made up of compositions by Patrick Kosk, Hans Peter Kuhn and Karl-Heinz Stockhausen.

Now, 20 years later, Liisa Pentti revisits the themes of power and violence, memories and survival. La Folia @2016 is a reconstruction of the original choreography, but in a new form. This reconstruction not only tackles themes that are current once again, but also poses the question of the possibility or necessity of reconstruction in dance – the contemporaneity of dance and the scope of choreography.

Credits