Red Desert

Red Desert is a piece for three female dancers in which the performers explore various physical manifestations of aggression. In the piece, aggression in all its forms serves as the starting point for virtuosic movement, physicality, and composition.We treat aggression as a physical event, an energy, a direction, a multidisciplinary, universal, and dynamic phenomenon that resonates with the performers’ experiential horizon. The world of the work is inspired by Clarissa Pinkola Estés’s book Women Who Run with the Wolves (1992), which explores the archetypes of the wild woman in myths and stories.

Inspired by Estés’s book, the work’s starting points are questions and reflections on female aggression, its strangeness, and its various cultural manifestations. In the work, aggression is a force that propels action forward and sets change in motion. Aggression is the motivation for change.

Clarissa Pinkola Estés’s book contains the story of La Loba, the She-Wolf, which inspires the world of the work and suggests its dramaturgical structure. La Loba is a story of the wild woman archetype, who lives in the desert in a world between worlds, creating and taking life. In the story, aggression, instinct, intuition, earthiness, emotions, creativity, wildness, and freedom shine through their presence and their acceptance. Aggression ties these phenomena together. This perspective is also at the heart of our work.

This work has been supported by: the Arts Promotion Centre Finland, the Samuel Huber Art Foundation,

and the Liisa Pentti+Co Residency

Premiere: August 28, 2021, Wiljami Cultural Center, Rovaniemi