DEPRESSION RYA
portfolio
selection of works by choreographer Laura Jantunen
Laura Jantunen
Laura Jantunen is a choreographer and multidisciplinary artist based in Vantaa, Finland. She has worked as a choreographer, dancer, video maker, and textile artist since finishing her vocational qualification in dance in 2011 from Outokumpu dance education. She finished her Master's degree in choreography at the University of Arts Helsinki in June 2023.
Jantunen's work has been shown mostly in Finland, for example, at Zodiak - the Center for New Dance (Helsinki), Titanik Gallery (Turku), Poriginal Gallery (Pori), Mustarinda (Kainuu) and Kutomo Art Space (Turku). From 2012 to 2017 she toured yearly with the Italian pop group Pop_X in various venues around Italy. She frequently performs her works outside of the usual black box settings, which has prompted her to stage performances in places such as an office, museums, and a forest.
pic Laura Malmivaara
Somagics
Artistic practice
Somagics is a phenomenological movement practice developed and by Laura. At the core of the practice is an intimate and uncompromising focus on one's own sensory experiences, recognizing them and allowing movement to arise from them. Laura started to develop Somagics in 2022 but the roots of the practice go deeprer. Perception and somatic practices have been part of her choreographic work for over a decade. At the moment Laura organizes weekly movement classes under the title Somagics Laboratory. The classes are open for all and you are welcome to join, just email laura.jantunen1@gmail.com and ask to receive the info letter.
Works created through Somagics are The Idiot Gardener, Outoliini, Ambeo and Intimate Scenes.
People in the picture are Pauliina Sjöberg and Pääsky Miettinen
pic Laura Jantunen
The Idiot Gardener (ongoin)
choreographer, performer
The Idiot Gardener is a fool character and a series of performances that research environments through embodying gardens and forests. The Idiot Gardener can be seen as “a spirit of the forest”, a human personification that grew out of the more-than-human landscape.
The goal of various versions of the Idiot Gardener performances is to illustrate how green spaces shape the physicality and behavior of the character, resulting in different kinds of performances. Through the series, Jantunen aims to reveal how the way we use our bodies is shaped by the environments we inhabit, and how a variety of spaces create a plurality of bodily shapes. Do we inhabit spaces or do they inhabit us?
pic Nina Wilenius
Outoliini (2023)
choreographer, performer, costume design
Outoliini (Oddling) looks at the moments in close relationships (family, friends, lovers, partners) where the societally constructed human in us steps into the background and enjoyment of being with a loved one emerge. In Outoliini we concentrated on non-sexual encounters. This limitation gave space to the naive, playful, flirtatious, and more-than-human forms of moving.
People in the picture are Laura Jantunen and Pääsky Miettinen
pic Jere Aalto
Ambeo (2022)
choreographer
Ambeo is post humanistic landscape and playground filled with creatures. During the performance, the creatures form alliances, play games, flirt with the audience, and study their environment and each other.
People recognisable in the picture are Heini Hermunen, Dory Ikonen and Vellamo Ikonen.
pic Jussi Ulkuniemi
Kesä (2021)
Choreographer and dancer
Summer is a performance for summer. The work deals with summer, lives in summer and disappears into summer. The performance, built on dance and sound, takes place outdoors, in the middle of a wooded landscape. A multi-sensory work seeks to capture, understand, and stop a small piece of summer as it is at the time the work is made.
People in the picture are Pie Kär, Sofia Keto-Tokoi and Laura Jantunen
pic Liina Aalto-Setälä
Intimate Scenes (2021)
choreographer, performer, costume design
Intimate scenes explore the potentiality of being oneself in front of an audience. The performance approaches this vulnerable state by confronting the audience as a persona rather than a performer and through this attempts to create an intimate relationship with the audience as a whole.
pic Liina Aalto-Setälä
Keltanen (2020)
choreographer, performer, ryijy and costume design
Keltanen (Yellow) is a visit to a world which manifests as a range of sensations. The momentary nature of sensations carries with it excitement, discovery, and forgetting. The piece gathers and then lets go of what it has gathered. It surfaces and it recedes.
pic Noora Isoeskelin
Talvi (2019)
choreographer and performer
Winter, created by Laura Jantunen and her workgroup, explores the spatial, atmospheric, bodily, and psychological characteristics of wintertime, gradually fleshing out the persona, the colors, the characteristics, and the bodily qualities of the coldest season.
People in the picture are Pauliina Sjöberg and Laura Jantunen
pic Katri Naukkarinen
WASTED (2018)
Convener and performer
WASTED is a durational collective performance that looks at labor as a framework, an idea, a practice, and a focus. The objective is to frame all actions into a general notion of work, questioning its implications and meanings from idiosyncratic, societal, and material perspectives. WASTED asks how work-life would be if we were to view it through the lens of sustainability and care.
People in the picture are Roy Boswell, Anni Puolakka, Kristian Palmu and Sonya Lindfors.
pic Liina Aalto-Setälä
Ryijy maker
Since 2017 Laura has created her colorful ryijy textiles. The picture here presents a ryijy from Solar Noon group exhibition from Taattisten Tila in 2023 curated by Riikka Thitz. The text in the ryijy is by a poet Milka Luhtaniemi.
pic Aukusti Heinonen