Category Archives: Life

cover girl

Today I was positively surprised to find myself on the cover of the Finnish Dance Magazine (Tanssi-lehti). Inside the magazine was a review of my work HUIPPUSUORITUS â€“ OUTSTANDING PERFORMANCE at the Full Moon Dance Festival in PyhÃ¤jÃ¤rvi and it was very positive and a bit flattering. Thatâ€™s always nice. So if you havenâ€™t seen it yet, you have to go and get your copy of the Tanssi magazine. I might translate some bits into English but these days are so filled with writing grant applications and preparing for Acts of Clothing rehearsals next week that it might take a while.
The only â€˜problemâ€™ with the great cover & review in the Tanssi magazine was that the cover photograph was not credited correctly. For about the last 9 years, all photographs of my works have been taken and created in collaboration with photographer Pekka MÃ¤kinen and itâ€™s really really a shame and a big mistake that the front image (which is just amazing) is credited to someone else than him.
The image -by Pekka MÃ¤kinen- is this one, of course:

Johanna

back to business

Last weeks have been a bit of a struggle in terms of adjusting into a new rhythm of getting up really early. The summer wasnâ€™t pure holiday but mornings were mellow â€“not only for me but for he whole family. My daughter started school two weeks ago and as she goes to the Steiner school in Kuopio, her days start every day at 7.55 am. And thatâ€™s quite early in my opinion. Anyway, Iâ€™ve found myself quite disorientated and almost dysfunctional at times as days seem to be suddenly filled with appointments of bringing or picking up someone from somewhere.
And in the midst of that, Iâ€™ve tried to keep up with my running as my first half marathon is coming up soon, on the 5th of September. Today I did my last long run (16 kilometres) before the half marathon and the upcoming weeks will be a bit lighter and easier with the training. Thatâ€™s great as some of the long runs have been kind of â€˜fighting my mindâ€™ although I think Iâ€™ve been able to overcome many psychological obstacles lately in terms of my running. Now thereâ€™s a lot to think about in terms of pace and gels / energy drinks during the half marathon especially as I easily get problems with my stomach during running. And of course thereâ€™s the question, what to wear?
The Functional Team, where Iâ€™ve done my functional training and which has been coaching my training for the past year or so, has moved to a new beautiful space with three studios and KINESIS circuit training possibilities. Iâ€™ve tried out KINESIS twice now and I think itâ€™s something Iâ€™ll be doing a lot during the autumn. It just feels great and efficient but at the same time fluid and soft. Iâ€™ll have my third workshop session tomorrow and then I should be ready for individual KINESIS training. Iâ€™m really looking forward to that!
Iâ€™ve started rehearsing on my upcoming work and Iâ€™m really excited about the collaboration with Marcia Farquhar. More about that a bit later. Last week I had a photo shooting session of the BODY/HAIR performance and I hope I’m able to post a few images next week.
Now I need to get some rest. I feel the long run in my legs and thereâ€™s no mercy in the morning when my daughterâ€™s school starts!

Johanna

rules & hints

I’ve been wallpapering my home office and therefore cleaning and going through tons of stuff. Today I re-found this A4 that I got maybe about 10 years ago which includes ‘Some rules and hints for students and teachers or anybody else’ by John Cage. It always makes me smile so here it is for you as well:

Some rules and hints for students and teachers or anybody else

by John Cage

RULE ONE: Find a place you trust, and then try trusting it for awhile.

RULE TWO: General duties of a student – pull everything out of your teacher; pull everything out of your fellow students.

RULE THREE: General duties of a teacher – pull everything out of your students.

RULE FOUR: Consider everything an experiment.

RULE FIVE: be self-disciplined – this means finding someone wise or smart and choosing to follow them. To be disciplined is to follow in a good way. To be self-disciplined is to follow in a better way.

RULE SIX: Nothing is a mistake. There’s no win and no fail, there’s only make.

RULE SEVEN: The only rule is work. If you work it will lead to something. It’s the people who do all of the work all of the time who eventually catch on to things.

RULE EIGHT: Don’t try to create and analyze at the same time. They’re different processes.

RULE NINE: Be happy whenever you can manage it. Enjoy yourself. It’s lighter than you think.

RULE TEN: “We’re breaking all the rules. Even our own rules. And how do we do that? By leaving plenty of room for X quantities.” (John Cage)

HINTS: Always be around. Come or go to everything. Always go to classes. Read anything you can get your hands on. Look at movies carefully, often. Save everything – it might come in handy later.

domestic days

Days just seem to pass without anything special happening. Thatâ€™s alright, though. But Iâ€™ve done a few things, both for my own wellbeing and for the progress of our house building. Iâ€™ve read a few novels. What a luxury to lie most of the day in bed, reading! Amazing. Yesterday I defrosted the freezer and cleaned the fridge. Now we are ready for the ripening forest berries and strawberries, which we have to buy, though. But itâ€™s my and my daughterâ€™s tradition to buy a box of strawberries and put them in the freezer for the winter. And every time I make strawberry kissel during the winter, we think about how great it was that put the berries into the freezer.
Iâ€™ve kept up with my running and functional training. Most weeks I do three runs and one functional training. If I donâ€™t make it to the functional training, I do a fourth run or go to the gym. I really like the balance of doing running and whole body workout as running in itself is so straining for the legs. Anywayâ€¦
Last week was by daughterâ€™s birthday and we had a really nice party. First we celebrated with children and then had some friends over. We baked a lot but for the kids we made this inchworm cake. We had a so much fun and it was such a pleasure to see friends and hang out all night.

The next day I went with my daughter to a friendâ€™s place which is about 30 minutes out of Kuopio. It was heavenly. We went between the sauna and the lake all night, ate pancakes, had serious womenâ€™s conversations and just relaxed. I canâ€™t believe some people live in those kinds of places. And yet, at the same time I envy the friends living in New York or London. But, at least I, need both. The country life & the most urban cities. Besides the amazing site by the lake including a wonderful garden, I guess I mostly enjoyed the company of the hostess. I canâ€™t remember when I last have had a sauna with another woman, talking heart to heart, sharing, thinking and just being together in the Finnish sauna. It was truly a bliss.

Kuopio is one of the worst shopping places on earth â€“ at least thatâ€™s how it felt today. This was the second time I went to the sales and tried to find something but came back empty handed. Itâ€™s ok as I donâ€™t really have money to buy anything but sometimes it really sucks. So I ended up buying a lot of bread from the factory outlet of Vaasan & Vaasan and beetroot lasagne from the factory outlet of Kasvisgalleria.

Have joyous days!

Johanna

aftermath

Iâ€™ve realized how stressful the spring was and now that Iâ€™m easing into the summer and a bit of a holiday, I start to feel all the workload in my body. I even havenâ€™t had the time to sit down in peace to write my blog and there are numerous things that I havenâ€™t managed to complete the way I would have liked or needed to. I have some issues with my lower back and neck which need a bit of focus, time and energy.
My performances during the Kuopio Dance Festival as part of Paikallisliike 09 event went well but left me with a lot of questions. I was very happy that some collegues, people from the Finnish Dance Information Centre and at least one international writer were present at the performances but I donâ€™t understand why the Kuopio Dance Festival cannot collaborate with the regional dance centre more thoroughly. Many dance professionals say that the Paikallisliike programme is much more exciting than the actual Kuopio Dance Festival programme but still there are a lot of writers that were in Kuopio who did not bother to see the full Paikallisliike programme because they donâ€™t consider the program seriously. Jussi Tossavainen from Helsingin Sanomat and Eeva Kauppinen from the Finnish theatre magazine and Kaleva newspaper -among others- were here but did not attend the full Paikallisliike programme (they also didnâ€™t bother to attend the launch of the ANTI Festival 2009 programme). I saw Eeva in one of the performances, which consisted of two worst works Iâ€™ve seen for a while. I donâ€™t know, but I think she was there because one of the works was a premiere by Rimpparemmi, a folk dance group from the same region where she lives. Jussi Tossavainen I only saw in the Veljmies supermarket gambling and didnâ€™t feel like saying hello to him. I donâ€™t know – I just donâ€™t understand why writers across Finland and Europe come all this way but instead of seeing as much as they can, they gamble, take salsa classes or otherwise just relax as supposed so showing interest to contemporary dance artistsâ€™ works? This really depresses me. Well, an exception was Ann-Marie Wrange from the Swedish Dans Tidningen who came to see several nights of the Paikallisliike event and who also attended both of my works. That was really lovely and I enjoyed her presence in BODY/HAIR a lot.

Thereâ€™s a lot I would like to blog about but I will have to continue tomorrow. Today I went to functional training and cycled back and forth and feel pretty exhausted now. Iâ€™ve promised to my trainer that I will run a half marathon in September so Iâ€™m in the middle of my running programme. Iâ€™ll write more about that soon.

Johanna

impressions & some iconic images of New York

The site-specific performance symposium in New York was very good and exciting and I thank Gulgun, Bertie & Frank for inviting me. It was very important for me to hear about several projects and festivals done by an exciting mix of curators, artists and venues. And in terms of curating and organizing the ANTI Festival, it was also great to feel that we are part of a whole field working site-specifically and sharing a lot of similar concerns, challenges and issues.
My schedule in New York was quite tight and my visit rather short, but here are some images I took during my walks. Many of them are very iconic and typical images of New York but I guess the same images have to be taken over and over again as New York is just amazing. Unfortunately, I don’t have any images of the symposium or my 10k run in the Central Park. I was supposed to participate in a running event here in Kuopio in May but then this trip came about and I couldn’t take part in it. So I promised to myself and my trainer, that I will run 10k on my own in the Central Park, my goal being that I run it in less than an hour. Well, I did it in 58 minutes and it was truly an amazing feeling to be running there. And I was pretty satisfied with my performance that went easily and smoothly.

Images from where I stayed – in the middle of Manhattan:

My hotel Carlton Arms which I can highly recommend:

My stop:

The ruins of WTC:

A walk in Soho:

A boat trip to Staten Island:

Nighttime visit to the Empire State Building:

symposium in New York

Iâ€™m just on my way to New York where Iâ€™ll be giving a talk in one of the panels of Site-specific Performance Symposium in CUNY. The whole symposium looks really exciting and Iâ€™m looking forward to participate in it -and of course to spend a couple of days in NY. If you are anywhere near, please come and here us discussing issues around site-specific performance!

Johanna

Happy Motherâ€™s Day!

Iâ€™m happy I got to go for a run in the morning and to do a really good functional training session in the afternoon.

Tomorrow & Tuesday will be extremely busy as Iâ€™m off to New York on Wednesday!

Johanna

finally a weekend at home

Last weeks have been super busy for me as I was performing in Sweden, then went to Brussels and every chance I got, I was working on the new one-to-one performance BODY/HAIR which I premiered last Wednesday in Kuopio. It was a kind of work-in-progress day of performances but Iâ€™m pretty happy with it all. It was quite exciting as to get the soundscape, the costume, the stage equipment and all that together was a real challenge in terms of time and budget so Iâ€™m kind of proud that I was able to pull it together. The performance is quite tough for me to do â€“not so much one but to keep repeating it one after the otherâ€¦ I was really exhausted, friction burned and bruised afterwards. I was also very tired because it has been more than a month since I had a day off. Anyway, I survived it and have the weekend off now. What a luxury.
My performance shoes are the corset boots by Minna Parikka:

Brussels was real nice and green. Kuopio was still very winter like when I left so it felt like a real luxury to see so much green (I stayed near Botanica) and walk in summer shoes. It was a lot of work though as I did a presentation with Gregg about ANTI Festival, then worked with Gregg on completing this yearâ€™s festival programme, saw as many performances as possible in the Trouble #5 Festival and also we had an audit of our A Space for Live Art EU project. Lotâ€™s of work indeed! But it was great to see Gregg and some other artists there like Rosie Dennis, Essi Kausalainen, Guillermo Gomez Pena, the xxx group, Johanna Lecklin etcâ€¦. The nice thing also was that Kuopio had a kind of a heat wave whilst I was away so when I got back, practically all the snow was gone and the weather had really changed.
Brussels:
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Now I have a couple of days off and Iâ€™m just trying to relax and do stuff that at home. Then Iâ€™m staring to prepare my trip to New York. Lotâ€™s of exciting things happening!

Happy Labour Day weekend to everyone! Hauskaa Vappu-viikonloppua kaikille!

Johanna

breakfast

What a sunny and beautiful and bright day. I’m enjoying an easy morning at home and having a luxury of reading the newspaper in peace, updating my blogs, commenting other people’s blogs, listening to radio, enjoying that the kids are outside playing. A good moment.
I went to Helsinki earlier this week to attend a reception hosted by Alexander Stubb, the foreign minister of Finland. He held the reception for remarkable Finnish artists & important people working in the arts and there were a lot of A-list celebrities and artists there -and me of course. Also the president of Finland, Tarja Halonen popped by. It was a really good party and I got to meet and talk to a lot of people including Minna Parikka whose fan I am. I was wearing the same handbag as Minna and her shoes as well. Anyway, artist Riiko Sakkinen was there and he had criticised the art works Alexander had bought recently. So today’s Helsingin Sanomat reported, that Alexander had admitted that he doesn’t know anything about contemporary art and asked Riiko to invite 12 artists for a dinner so that he can learn more about contemporary art. I think this is great but I’m concerned that Riiko’s knowledge of contemporary art is very limited to visual arts and artists. I think I have to send some material to Alexander or do something else. Ideas?

Yesterday I went to see a really awful performance Verigreippi. I really didn’t understand why the makers of the performance wanted me or anyone to witness what they were doing. I didn’t believe in anything they did or said. It was just so pretencious and false and there really wasn’t anything there to see or hear or to think. Oh god. What a waste of time.

I’m off to run now and enjoy the beautiful day. Would be great to hear what you think about Riiko Sakkinen introducing contemporary art to Alexander Stubb or Verigreippi for that matter…

Johanna

ps. in the image Bodium coffee maker, Polar FT60, painting by Mikko Valtonen, wall paper Larsen ‘winter tree’, table BoConcept ‘Amari’, chair Danerka, Iittala plate, KoKo coffee cup, Apple MacBook