Lotta Halinen, Tenho, 2022

Twenty-two performances in elderly care centers in Satakunta.

Residency: February-March 2022

Dance artist Lotta Halinen is working at the residency during February-March 2022 on her TENHO-dance piece. TENHO, a solo dance piece, has been inspired by schlager music and old silent films. The performance is geared towards nursing home occupants and those interested in nostalgia. The project combines contemporary dance and old finnish schlager music to encounters between generations in changing showrooms. The project started in 2020 at the RaumArs residency and has been worked on whenever possible due to the pandemic situation.

During her artistic process, Lotta has explored old songs and movies and their motional and expressional themes. She has tried to find elements from them which will have a dialogue with a contemporary person. Using these discoveries she has been absorbed in the material motionally, vocally and using different spaces to create new bodily interpretations. The dance piece has been worked on at the residency in 2020 and 2021 and a demo was presented during the week for Rauma senior citizens in October 2021.
 
Halinen will be touring an assortment of Satakunta nursing homes for a month. The project is trying to reach senior citizens who have been isolated and out of reach during the pandemic. The dance piece is a continuation of Halinen's artistic work outside the traditional theater stage with its motional and spacial processes. The project has been created and funded in collaboration with the Regional Dance Centre of Western Finland.
 

Lotta Halinen is a Helsinki based dance artist that works broadly as a choreographer, performer and dance teacher in the field of performing arts. She has graduated from the Movement and Performance Research programme of North- Carelian Gollege of Outokumpu in 2013. After spending some time in Israel both dancing and creating under the guidance of Liat Dror and Nir Ben Gal Dance company she continued her studies in the Salzburg Experimental Academy of Dance where she spend her last year of studies as a performance major.

She has been developing her own work since 2014 and her recent works include Figures (2020), Lux Griseo (2020), White Hour (2017) and Veggur/Seinä (2015). Her work has been shown both internationally and locally in gallery SIC Helsinki, Junge Kunst Parcours Festival Wien, Künstler Haus Vienna, Kaktusfestival Helsinki, Cultural Center of La Caldera Barcelona and in Kiisu Theatre in Outokumpu.