Directors Greeting

FULL MOON DANCE 24 - 28.7.2007

When I was just starting out as a young choreographer in 1996 I was commissioned to prepare a piece for the Full Moon Dance festival. It was called Missä Jallu Luuraa and was to be performed at the school, where a new auditorium had just been built. The piece was finished in the nick of time, but the small size of the space and the massive, changing set elements involved had me worried. My nerves were jangling on the night of the premiere, but everything went wonderfully well: the dancers were brilliant and the scene changes went off without a hitch. It felt like a little miracle. The school became another world; the space changed. When the piece was performed later on in the autumn in a large professional theatre in Helsinki it no longer felt the same: time and place have a decisive impact on a performance and how it is experienced.

Art for me means change, a mental and bodily shift which leaves me changed as a person. This is something I find refreshing and powerfully rewarding. The physical aspect of dance makes it an art form of unique moments which, experienced alone or together with an audience, can provide an opportunity for those little shifts to occur and for people to be born anew.

One of my aims as the artistic director of Full Moon Dance is to get dance out onto the streets. I want to provide an opportunity for dance to be seen from a different and surprising angle, to create a new experience, to give the time and place a chance to influence both the artists and their work and the spectators gathered round. Full Moon Dance's previous artistic directors have all played a part in helping the event grow to become Finland's most important contemporary dance festival, and I would like to continue their work by keeping the wonder of Pyhäjärvi alive: the performances create a space which facilitates change.(I Full Moon Dance follows the times and reacts accordingly.

The primary focus of this year's Full Moon will be Finnish dance, giving spectators a chance to see classic home-grown contemporary dance works, the younger generation's sharp and critical take on the world, and experienced choreographers' perspectives on dance art in 2007. I am delighted to say that we will have four first premieres from Finnish choreographers, a number of open-air performances in the Pyhäjärvi countryside, and Absolut Finland 2007, a unique evening showcasing a selection of Finnish dance. We will also have the brand new Full Moon Dance On The Road, which will take dance performances outside the town limits to the surrounding parishes.

I am particularly happy about the new three-year artist-in-residence collaboration project with Japan's leading contemporary dance venue Yokohama Red Brick House Number 1. The goal of this project is to further artist exchange between the countries and offer young choreographers and dancers a chance to get to know one another and thereby enhance long-lasting cultural exchange. Dance works and solo pieces by both of the project's inaugural participants, Maki Morishita from Japan and Vera Nevanlinna from Finland, will be presented during the festival.

The festival provides a unique opportunity to experience up-to-the-minute dance and see what is happening in dance art in Finland and abroad in 2007.
I welcome you to this summer's Pyhäjärvi Full Moon Dance to meet with like-minded people, share experiences, learn something new and witness little miracles during five whole days of engaging and absorbing dance works. Enjoy the festival week!

Harri Kuorelahti
Aristic director