Rolling the dice, religiously

Most experimental dance concepts can be boiled down to a sentence or two of explanation. The Ashes Project, conceived and directed by Finnish dancer and theater artist Jenni Kokkomäki, is considerably more complex.  

As much an installation as a production, the proceedings will include a full-blown performance and concert on Alfred Ve Dvoře's main stage (Sept. 9), followed by two days of individual, one-on-one shows in half-hour increments, by appointment only, in the theater's secondary performance space (Sept. 11 and 12). International in scope (with collaboration by artists from Finland, Norway, the Czech Republic and Mexico), the performances will feature choreography by Kaisu Hölttä, video by Laila Evenson and music by Tuomas Rounakari. The themes and subject matter include the wide variety of religious experience and the struggle between doubt and conviction experienced by spiritual seekers around the world.

The opening night multimedia performance will preview selections of choreography developed for the one-on-one shows, tailored by Kokkomäki for presentation to a standard audience on the main stage. Following the dance section, Rounakari, who has composed for film as well as Finland's National Theater, will present an original composition for solo violin titled Shamanviolin.  

To hear Kokkomäki tell it, the main stage performance is little more than a run-up to the one-on-one shows. This veritable marathon of dance is an adventurous undertaking, to be sure, and the results are unlikely to be mediocre -- blessed or cursed, the concept seems likely to achieve either great intimacy or painful stumbling. "I wanted to create something unique, something interactive in a way that group performances cannot achieve," Kokkomäki explains.

The director has taken great pains to ensure that no two performances will be exactly alike. Kokkomäki and her fellow dancers, Alena Dittrichová and Cristina Maldonaldo, will select choreography by lottery before each performance, pairing it with music and varying directions delivered by headset to the lone audience member. As the audience of one follows suggested movements -- a circuit of the room, for example, or a physical gesture -- the dancer in question will weave the disparate elements together spontaneously along with him. This cocktail of chance components reduces the possibility of repeat to an almost abstract degree of unlikelihood.

Kokkomäki claims to be wrestling with her own relationship to faith in this work. Raised in evangelical Lutheran Finland, her personal spirituality is nebulous. "I'm not religious, but I believe in God," she replies when queried on the subject. "I'm really trying to figure it out." It is largely to such uncertain and faltering attitudes about faith and religious conviction that Kokkomäki is responding with The Ashes Project. "I think people today are wary of commitment, whether religious or otherwise," she explains. "I'm interested in that."

Whether or not the performances inspire spiritual epiphanies or the shedding of religious illusions, the prospects for some intensely interactive and earnest exploration of the topics at hand are good. In any case, risk promises to be its own reward for this ambitious and industrious troupe -- not to mention the audience.

James Walling can be reached at
jwalling@praguepost.com