Mouthpiece - performance for six mouths
Premiere 27th of October 2020 in Mad House Helsinki
Concept: Elias Girod, Lin Da & Lauri Supponen
Wind instrumentalists: Kaisa Kortelainen, Saku Mattila & Joonatan Rautiola
Choreographer-dancers: Elias Girod & Lin Da
Composer: Lauri Supponen
Costume and set designer: Amita Kilumanga
Light designer: Olivia Pohjola
Production: Elias Girod, Lin Da, Lauri Supponen, Mad House Helsinki, Live Arts Society, Uusinta Ensemble,
Support: Arts Promotion Centre Finland, Live Arts Society, The Finnish Music Foundation, Helsinki City, Kone Foundation, The Finnish Culture Foundation
Photos by Sanni Siira
Mouthpiece (Mad House Helsinki, 2020) is a performance combining contemporary dance and contemporary music, that features three wind instrumentalists, two choreographer-dancers and a composer. The performative interests of the working group focuses on the movements and fluids of the mouth, and the fears and pleasures pertaining to them. The aim is to open the mouth as an interstice, through which we can face our humanity and that of the other.
Mouthpiece was created in a lengthier time frame typical for dance, where all members of the working group participated in the creation and development of the different elements of the piece. From spring 2019 onwards the ensemble has researched aspects of communications and social constructions of the mouth and the in-betweenness of the private and the public mouth. All performers are musicians and dancers, as well as singers. The instruments comprise mainly of the mouthpieces of the oboe, the flute and the saxophone, as well as custom-built tubular instruments, which are sounded individually and as a choir. These also highlight the part of every wind instrument that always remains inside the body of the player. The tubes are also a scenographic element that suggest the mouth to be perceived as an organ.
Mouthpiece explores breathing and whispering as sonic elements, and in so doing leans against the findings of Brandon LaBelle in ‘Lexicon of the Mouth’. Another element is kissing, present in the performance as encounters between two or more entities. The ensemble also explores Mary Douglas’ definition of “dirt as matter out of place”. The term links with a concept in Laura Werner’s book on feminist philosophy, where categories and binary constructions are put to question. In Douglas’ ‘dirty dirt’ also categories are out of place: the distinctions between dirt-cleanliness, subject-object as well as private-public. The mouth operates in the interstices of these categories.