something like this is a performance that looks at the possibilities of the stage and hip-hop culture to serve as a platform for telling diverse stories, taking over space, empowerment and communality.
In this work aimed at young audiences, four street dance background performers meet on stage. A rich whole is built from a simple starting point, where the scenes are constructed in front of the viewers' eyes. Performers from diverse backgrounds dance, tell stories and have fun – together. There is room for many kinds of stories on this stage.
something like this turns the stage into a dance floor where stories, identities and ways of doing things can meet. Together with the viewers, the work asks: How should a performance be viewed or experienced, how does dance or movement move from one body to another, what kinds of things can be told through dance or movement? What is a communal dramaturgy like?
The work is produced in the framework of Zodiak's Zodiak Youth project. The work will tour in the cultural houses of the Helsinki capital region during autumn 2023 and spring 2024.
Credits
Concept and direction: Sonya Lindfors
Choreography: Sonya Lindfors & working group
Sound design: Sebastian Kurtén
Lighting design: Erno Aaltonen
Costume design: Sanna Levo
Performers: Akim Bakhtaoui, Linda Ilves, Ramona Panula, Sophia Wekesa
Part of the process as a performer: Selma Kauppinen
Production: Zodiak – Center for New Dance, in the framework of the Zodiak Youth project
Producer: Elina Ruoho-Kurola
Supported by: Jane and Aatos Erkko Foundation
Working group
Sonya Lindfors (she/her) is an award winning Cameroonian – Finnish choreographer, facilitator and artistic director of antiracist and counterhegemonic art organisation UrbanApa (www.urbanapa.fi) in Helsinki. During the past years she has been busy with speculative and decolonial practices, summoning the potentiality of art and the stage to challenge the dominant narratives and power structures.
Linda Ilves (she/her) is a street dancer and musician from Helsinki. Her dance and music stems from a need and sense for community, expressing herself and understanding hip hop and street dance culture.
Ramona Panula (she/her), Bgirl Ramona is a professional breaker, dancer, dance teacher and cultural producer. Panula has had a long and international competitive career as a breaker and has performed well in the world's biggest arenas as well as in Finland. Currently, Panula is part of the Finnish break team aiming for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. In addition to competitions, Panula has worked as a dancer in a variety of fields during her career, including theatre.
A few competition achievements:
- 1st place at the 2017 World Championships (Helsinki).
- 2019 Nord Vibes (St. Petersburg) 1st place.
- 2019 World Championships (Nanjing, China) 12th place
- 2023 European Championships (Almeria, Spain) 16th place
- 2023 Loop the Break (Helsinki) 1st place
- 2023 World Championships. Panula has been selected to represent Finland.
In addition to dancing, Panula has been very active as an event producer and community developer in the Finnish hip hop community, including as a board member/coordinator of SADE ry, developer and producer of Call out Suomi events and chair of the Finnish Breikkiliitto ry (2019-2023).
Sophia Wekesa (she/they) is a dancer, dance teacher, dj, performer and lecturer on culturally sensitive and antiracist practices. Ever since finding dancehall 2009 they have committed to the culture and the Finnish and global scenes. As a dancer they are a charismatic performer who enjoys raw and honest energy and deep knowledge of the cultural context behind steps and movement. Their work focuses on building ethical practices in art and on how to recenter marginalized people with their own narratives.
Akim Bakhtaoui (he/him) is a dancer-choreographer who also goes by the name Alpha Extreme. Akim is one of the most well-known street dancers in Finland. He is known to many from the group WFFF (Will Funk For Food). Akim is multi-talented in street dance styles, as well as a contemporary dance professional. On the field, Bakhtaoui works as a choreographer, dancer, pedagogue, judge and competes on an international level. Akim has been teaching dance for over 12 years. Akim graduated with a bachelor's degree in dance from Teatterikorkeakoulu in spring 2019.
Selma Kauppinen (she/her) is a Helsinki-based freelance dancer and performer. She graduated as a dance artist from Tampere Conservatory in 2017, and has since then worked diversely as a performing artist. Selma gets her kicks from spaces and events that succeed in bringing people together from different backgrounds. Exploring communities and connections between people are her favorite themes in both science and art.
Erno Aaltonen (he/him) is a lighting designer, scenographer and artistic advisor working in performing arts. His style is a mixture between the visual language of the contemporary stage and the percussiveness and 3-dimensionality of a club experience, or sometimes the other way around.
Sebastian Kurtén (he/him) is a music producer, sound designer and dancer. His sound is inspired by hip hop culture, the environment and everyday objects. Sebastian is interested in the process of turning something ordinary and recognisable into something abstract.
Sanna Levo (she/her) is a Finnish costume designer and scenographer who has worked with multiple freelance companies, as well as at the Finnish National Theater and the TTT-Theatre in Tampere. Sanna Levo is a member of 00100ENSEMBLE, a collective focusing on immersive performances. Levo has worked with Sonya Lindfors since 2013.
Word from the director
I've been dancing for as long as I can remember. I started dancing because I loved dancing to good music with friends. Dancing first became a hobby, then a passion and finally a profession. Although I now work in a variety of contexts, my spiritual home is still in street dance and hip hop culture and the communities they create.
For a little Black girl growing up in the 80s in Finland, hip hop culture provided a platform for identification, self-esteem and pride in my own Blackness and roots. That much talked about representation. A culture I felt I belonged to. Decades later, this culture, community and people have made me the person and artist I am.
Community, sharing, playfulness. Social justice, politicality, empowerment. Celebrating diversity. And the courage to be myself.
Hip hop and street dance culture have given me so much.
When I was given the opportunity to make a work for young audiences, it was clear that I wanted to make a work on these very themes. Even though street dance and hip hop culture are mainstream, often exploited or at worst recklessly appropriated by contemporary art, it is still very rare to see street dance on dance stages. In many ways, therefore, it seems important, even historic, that this particular work by these artists could be the first dance performance for many children or young people.
something like this is a performance about street dance and hip hop culture, community, doing and experiencing together. The dream was to create a performance that I would have wanted to experience as a young person. The kind I needed. With a diverse group of dancers from different backgrounds, each dancing in their own way, each shining as their own unique selves. Encouraging each other, having fun, but also daring to be themselves.
The best part of this process has definitely been the working group. I am so eternally grateful, moved and happy to have been able to create, dance, fool around, discuss, learn, deepen and spend time with such unimaginably talented, empathetic, virtuoso, engaged, supportive and fun group of people.
Thank you <3
Thank you to our amazing, talented, visionary design team. A special thanks and mention to the performers, each of whom is not only an amazing dancer, but also a long-time professional in their own right. They are all committed to the culture, community, working together and learning. They teach, they produce, they make and they move the culture forward. Together.
This work is the result of collective and communal jammin, of this group and these people.
And it goes a little something like this.
– Sonya Lindfors
Shortly about the dance styles
Street dance is an umbrella term that encompasses a large number of different dances created in different contexts. Although various dance traditions from Africa and the African diaspora are now mainstream, their contexts, backgrounds and histories are still unknown to many. It is important to state that although these dances are danced around the world, even in non-Black communities, they are still Black dance and part of Black culture.
HIP HOP
The term hip hop is used to refer to both hip hop culture and hip hop dance.
hip hop culture was born in the 1970s in the Bronx, New York. It consists of five main elements: rapping, DJing, breakdancing, graffiti and information. Hip hop culture was born in black and brown youth communities out of a need to express themselves and address social issues. Community, social, political, empowerment and fun in the face of adversity are integral to hip hop culture. hip hop has gone from a local culture, growing within a few tens of square kilometres, to a global phenomenon and mainstream culture.
Hip hop dance is a genre of dance to hip hop music that emphasises the bounce movement and elements of social dance, isolations, different characterisations and the multifaceted influence of music. Hip hop is inspired by hip hop music and has evolved through the songs and dances that artists have released.
Hip Hop dance is a challenging title to define, as originally the four elements of Hip Hop culture were defined as graffiti, MCing, DJing and Bboying/Bgirling. Later, the fifth element was also named 'knowledge'. According to this breakdown, hip hop dance would be bboying/bgirling or breaking. The name is therefore a challenge, but so far, especially in Europe, the term hip hop dance has a strong position in defining events and dance classes.
Source: https://sadefinland.com/sade/tietopankki/tanssityylit/hip-hop/
DANCEHALL
Dancehall is a space, a state of mind, a culture, a musical genre and a dance style.
Dancehall as a dance genre was born in Jamaica in the 70s and 80s.
Dancehall was originally a place, a 'hall', where people danced, where parties were held. The very name suggests its social, party-dancing nature. Dancehall dance culture is essentially about social dancing, where easy dance moves are done in a group according to the instructions in a song.
As a dance genre, dancehall has its own technique, basic movements (the 'foundation'), characteristics and movement language.
It is a very fast-changing discipline, new dances are constantly being created and to become a skilled dancehall dancer you need to study and practice the history of the discipline, the foundation and the latest moves.
source: http://bubblinmoves.com/dancehall/
BREAKING
Breaking (also called "breaking", "b-boying" and "b-girling", "breakdance") is an acrobatic, dance-like and movement-based form of hip hop culture. It is a street dance characterised by an emphasis on the dancer's own style and interpretation.
The original dance of hip hop culture emerged in the 1970s in New York in African-American and Latinx communities, where it was inspired by many dance styles and the first DJ artists, as well as by social struggles for equality. In the surrounding society, inequalities between social classes prevailed and conflicts between young gangs were common. The birth story of hip hop is aptly summed up by the slogan: "Something out of nothing".
Source:https://www.breikkiliitto.fi/mit%C3%A4-on-breikki
LOCKING
Locking is a vibrant dance style originating in 1960s Los Angeles with unique freezes and energetic moves. Created by Don Campbell, it combined "locks" or freeze poses with dynamic motions. "The Lockers" dance group popularized locking, performing on TV and live events.
Today, locking remains a cherished dance style, uniting creativity, history, and entertainment for dancers and audiences worldwide.
HOUSE
House dance emerged in the 1970s and 1980s on the underground Black, Brown and queer club scenes of Chicago and New York. Born as a response to the commercialization of disco and its associated tensions, house dance became a platform for diverse influences to converge on the dance floor. This style heavily emphasizes footwork, drawing from Afro, Latin, and jazz traditions.
House dance is defined by its improvisational nature, allowing dancers to experiment freely without straying from its roots.
As a genre that celebrates artistic expression and diverse influences, house dance continues to thrive, showcasing the power of dance to transcend cultural boundaries and reflect the evolving spirit of the times.
Thank you
A huge thank you to all the families and loved ones for their support and encouragement. We wouldn't be doing this without you <3. Thank you Zodiak staff for your support and trust, special thanks to Elina who has lived the whole journey with us. Special thanks to Julian, with whom the journey and conversations around these very themes have continued for a decade now.
Shoutouts to all the pioneers, teachers and community activists, friends and colleagues. To all who have done, shared and taught. Street dance culture lives from community, community is everything. We would not exist without you.
Now the journey continues <3
Performances
Premiere: Wed 30.8.2023 klo 19.00, Zodiak Stage, Cable Factory, Helsinki
Tour performances for young audiences, autumn 2023
13.9. Kulttuuritalo Martinus, Vantaa
15.9. Malmitalo, Helsinki
21.–22.9. Vuotalo, Helsinki. Performance open for all audiences on 21.9. at 18:00
26.9. Lumosali, Vantaa
28.9. Kerava-sali
4.–5.10. Kanneltalo, Helsinki
10.10. Sello-sali, Espoo