Our resident dance company, Helsinki Dance Company, brings one of the few classics of Finnish contemporary dance to the Small Stage. Kenneth Kvarnström’s no-no premiered at Helsinki City Theatre in autumn 1996, ushering in a new era of powerfully physical contemporary dance. This year, we celebrate the work’s 30-year journey with a new version for nine dancers.

 

Poised between extreme physicality and sensual poetry, no-no unfolds as an intense ritual of movement that speaks to both body and soul. It is a dance work that does not explain its themes. It puts its trust in dance that speaks for and through itself.

Equal to Kenneth Kvarnström’s movement language in shaping this total work of art are Jens Sethzman’s lighting and spatial design, and music that carries the dancers from ecstatic physicality towards a transcendent sensitivity reaching for the sacred.

Premiered by Helsinki City Theatre’s dance company in 1996, no-no transformed Finnish contemporary dance and captivated audiences both in Finland and on tour across Europe. The work was last performed at Helsinki City Theatre in 2008, playing to sold-out houses.