ARTISTS-IN-RESIDENCE PERFORMANCES &

CRUISING - CAMERA OBSCURA RIDES

July 24 at 5-7pm, City center
July 25 at 2-4pm, City center

Artists-in-residence

A new three-year collaborative project will begin at Full Moon Dance with Japan's leading contemporary dance venue Yokohama Red Brick Warehouse Number 1. This Japanese-Finnish project will promote the exchange of performances and artists between the two countries through e.g. residential working: a Japanese choreographer will spend the summers working in Pyhäjärvi at Full Moon Dance and a Finnish choreographer will do likewise in Red Brick Warehouse in Yokohama. The project's Finnish organisers are the Finnish Dance Information Centre and Pyhäsalmi Dance Association, while its counterparts in Japan are The Finnish Institute in Japan and Yokohama Red Brick Warehouse.

The artists participating in the first phase of the project are Maki Morishita from Japan and Vera Nevanlinna from Finland. Both Morishita and Nevanlinna will work in residence at the festival. Morishita will make a piece with Finnish dancers and Nevanlinna will work on and perform in street and outside performances with the artist Mi Duncker. The works will be presented on July 24th at 5-7pm and on July 25th at 2-4pm.

Nevanlinna will continue her work in the residential collaboration project in November and December in Yokohama, Japan, where she will prepare a new premiere with Japanese dancers.

Both artists-in-residence will also perform their own solo works in a joint evening comprised of Nevanlinna's News and Morishita's Debutante and Koshitsu.

Cruising - Camera Obscura rides

Cruising is a camera obscura sightseeing ride in a transit van. Three spectators at a time sit comfortably in the back of the van facing a screen which shows a moving real-time inverted silhouette film of what is actually happening outside. The image is manipulated by the use of different-sizes lenses, and the Pyhäjärvi landscape looks nothing like it does in the normal light of day.

Maki Morishita

Born in 1975. As a high school student, she joined a creative dance club, and had lessons of modern dance. Later, she studied under Kim Itch contemporary dance with its origin in butoh, and from 1997 to 1999, worked as a dancer for Kim's company "Kim Itch + the Glorious Future." Meanwhile, in 1994, she started her independent creative work to identify her own expressions of dance, working together with colleagues. In 1998, co-founded a company "Study of Live works BANETO" with choreographer and dancer Tsuyoshi Shirai. She has performed in 25 cities in nine countries around the world.

Since then, she has participated in the company's production work and performance as a soloist. In 2003, she began to create and choreograph her solo pieces, and her first solo-piece "debutant" was performed in ten major cities in Japan and in Seoul, Korea. And she won "Yokohama City Art and Culture Promotion Foundation Award" at Solo x Duo Competition of Yokohama Dance Collection in February 2004 with the same piece.

She is currently working on her second solo-piece "koshitsu" which follows a style of a work-in-progress. She was performed in a rest room in the school house of the dance studio, the mini-theater, and the university, an elevator, and underground space, etc. She afterwards created "Tokyo koshitsu" and won excellent prize by "Tokyo competition #2”.

Moreover, "Morishita Maki Dance Show!!" had performed for eight days in the AFOPA Theater in Tokyo in December, 2005. She has been casted for the part of snowqueen in a theater piece "The Snowqueen",written by Hans Christian Andersen, directed by an Italian director, Teresa Ludovico, produced by Setagaya Public Theater.

While her cheerful and unique personality shows through her dance, the movements making the most of her long arms and legs, and her handsome appearance, present a powerful and slightly crazy dance, which is favorably received in Japan and abroad as well.

 Vera Nevanlinna

Vera Nevanlinna (b. 1972) has graduated as a dancer with M.A. in Dance Studies from the Department of Dance, The Theater Academy of Finland in 1998. Since then she has been working as a freelance-dancer and a -choreographer and has taken extra studies in dance in New York with Rosane Chamecki & Andrea Lerner, Miguel Gutierrez, Barbara Mahler and Sara Pearson & Patrik Widrig among others. Before dance studies Nevanlinna graduated as a freelance photographer from Muurla Folkhighschool.