Performative Session: ÉLIANE
ÉLIANE is a multidisciplinary dance performance for three dancers and voices.
It brings together contemporary dance, video, poetry and French composer Éliane Radigue’s meditative electronic music. Radigue’s buddhist worldview and its ethos pierces the images, sounds and motion of the work.
ÉLIANE is a collaboration between Teemu Mäki and Maija Nurmio where the meeting of two artistic worlds open a space for deep listening, embodied presence, and ethical reflection. The performance invites us to think about our place in the world and in the cycle of nature, our relationship with ourselves and with each other. It invites you to ask for change.
Music: Éliane Radigue, I’Île Re-sonante(2000)Direction: Teemu Mäki & Maija Nurmio
Choreography: Maija Nurmio
Dance: Jonna Eiskonen, Maija Karhunen, Maija Nurmio
Text & video: Teemu Mäki
Voices: Henni Kiri, Teemu Mäki, Olivia Pohjola
Lighting design: Olivia Pohjola
Photo: Saara Autere
Performers
Jonna Eiskonen has worked as a performer in the areas of dance, theatre and performance for 25 years. She completed her master’s degree in dance at Theatre Academy Helsinki, where she studied during 1996-2002. Jonna has also worked as a teacher in various art schools and institutions. For the past 10 years, she has been a performer in the multi-artistic and -cultural Chekhov Machine collective as an active member in the group.
Photo: Leif Laaksonen
Maija Karhunen (b. 1987) studied dance and performance in Berlin, Amsterdam and Finland and has worked as a performer/dancer in Finland and internationally. Currently she is based in Helsinki. Maija has also worked in the fields of art writing, arts administration and in different positions of trust, and with the topics of equity, diversity and accessibility in the arts.
Maija Nurmio (b. 1979, Master of Dance Arts) is a Helsinki-based choreographer and dancer who has worked extensively in dance and performance arts for more than two decades. At the heart of Nurmio’s artistic work is corporeality, accessing its knowledge and vastness. Her work pauses by deep humanity and addresses questions about life and death, human and non-human.
Nurmio’s choreographies have been presented in e.g. Kiasma Theatre, Vaba Lava Tallinn, Mad House, Saint Paul’s Church Limerick, Üfestudios Berlin, The Place London, Barker, The Finnish National Theatre, Finnish SOS Children’s Villages and prisons.
Teemu Mäki (1967–) is a visual artist, writer, director (theatre/opera/film) and researcher from Helsinki, Finland. He has been a freelancing artist since 1990, except for 2008–2013, when he was the Professor of Visual Art in Aalto University (Finland). He has had 64 solo exhibitions, participated in over 250 group shows, written ten books and written & directed numerous theatre plays, films and operas. He is a Doctor of Arts (2005) and a Docent in Artistic Research (The Research Institute of the Uniarts Helsinki, 2025–). And the President of the Artist’s Association of Finland (2018–)
Olivia Pohjola works as a lighting and video designer in the fields of performance and media arts. Pohjola graduated from the University of the Arts Helsinki’s Theatre Academy’s Lighting Design program in 2019. She works by exploring the interfaces between illusion and the situation after its breakage. As a new direction in her work, Pohjola is currently drawing graphic novels. Pohjola is also part of the Ekho Collective, a collective that creates immersive media artworks.