Light Life
performance and film

choreography Mikko Kallinen

music Girilal Baars

 

Light Life is an 18 minute long piece Mikko had performed at least once before he asked me to make the music for it. With the music I wrote for it, Light Life premiered in September 2004 in Helsinki.

The dance is performed in complete darkness. Mikko is dressed a special costume covered with small lightbulbs. You can only see the movements, not the body itself. It is a strange experience for the body will of course obscure some of the lights and it seems at times that it isn't possible for a human body to move like that.
   The music I made for Light Life is based around sparse, electronic scenes, where the mood is more improtant than any direction the music might imply. The dancer, too is more or less stationary, since there is no need to move – the dancer is the stage.
   Of course, the images shown here do not do the performance justice, as they cannot convey what you would actually experience in a dark room with only the bulbs on Mikko's costume as illumination.

Subsequently, in 2010, Mikko turned this idea into a film, which has been shown in festivals around Europe.



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