Karoliina & Maya, A Heady Mix of Dance and Cinema

April 5, 2017

Mixing two diverse forms of art like dance and cinema, Karoliina Loimaala and Maya Oliva have come to the city to showcase their unique performance.

‘Tales of Twenty Dodgy Fingers’ is divided into two chapters that have no specific ending. The first chapter is a murder mystery told through chilling movements and the second chapter is inspired by animation, taking the viewer to a different reality. Their dance art draws its inspiration from cinema, creating a visual and sound landscape.

Karoliina and Maya will perform at TIFA Working Studios on April 7. They speak to Pune365 about their performance art, inspiration and much more.

Is this a form of dance art that you have developed together?

We met in 2014 and we studied together at Performing Arts Research and Training Studios (PARTS) in Belgium. We had a lot of school assignments and they promoted a lot of collaboration between students. The first time we got to know each other was through working on a piece of music. Both music and movement are very connected. We create our own scenarios. For our research, we watch a lot of movies. Hayao Miyazaki’s films are the inspiration for the second performance. We don’t take specific themes or ideas from the films. The challenge really lies in creating the illusion of animation.

Are you telling a story through your performance?

Maybe in some way, but not in a narrow manner. There is no storyline about how things will go, so the audience is free to make their own interpretations. The movements are not abstract but the way the performance goes is not linear. We use music to create and build tension during the performance. The audience can come up with their own conclusions. There are two parts to our performance namely, chapter one and chapter six. We didn’t want to make a sequel so we named the next act ‘six’. They both are slightly connected but in a very non-linear way. They can stand apart as two different entities altogether.

How do you merge film art with movement and tell a story without any dialogue?

It came as a consequence. We kind of have an aversion towards abstract movement so, we do things to narrow it down and present it in relation to an object. The object is already created within the situation with an intention. We merge that with music and it syncs. It came by watching movies and we were inspired by several characters and Alfred Hitchcock films. The movement comes from daily life gestures along with the dance art which comes from what we have studied. It is composed with the music and becomes a narrative in a certain way.

In the classical Indian dancing style, the performances always tell a story in a linear manner. What do you think about that?

We are very inspired by that. The performances always depict plots and a story. We were choreographing a dance but we decided to remove the beginning part of the story and we went for another option. Their way of doing things is different. We don’t want to appropriate or take away from them.

We try as much as possible to bring our own way into it.

How different is your form of dance art from miming?

Miming is more of a one-on-one narrative. It is very closed off. The movement in this case has more variations. Miming is very straight-forward. It is not as broad as this.