Is this a dagger I see before me? Not at all. Macbeth is centre-stage and thrusting a hand towards a juggler’s ring instead of a weapon. A handful of rings are then fashioned into a crown that is precariously balanced atop the acrobat’s head. There are no other props, and not a damned spot of stage blood, in this uncommon take on Shakespeare’s tragedy. Each member of the seven-strong cast plays Macbeth, some even juggling the title role and Lady M in the same scene.
Finnish choreographer Tero Saarinen’s bracing dance-theatre production startles from the start. Delaying the witches’ arrival, it begins on the battlefield and is played without an interval, like the best Macbeths. The spirit of circus is ever present, the murderous thane’s vaulting ambition at one point represented by his desperate clambering over a heap of bodies. Each wayward sister is played by a pair of entwined performers. For one of Lady Macbeth’s speeches, an actor protrudes amid the other six who are jumbled together as if to represent her skirts. When she repeatedly attempts to clean her hands, the accompanying speech is spoken time and time again by different actors, accentuating her fixation.
Michael Baran’s translation and adaptation (in Finnish with English surtitles) interweaves dialogue with shared narration and recurrent description, as if reinforcing the sense of a story passed down through the ages. Macbeth is a play that constantly keeps resonance, its brutal power-grab inevitably now evoking the war in Ukraine as well as Finland’s border tensions with Russia. Lacerating sound and lighting designs carve up the action on stage in a production that continually finds fresh perspectives on familiar scenes. In one mesmerising moment, juggler Emil Dahl has a ring resting vertically on their head and with a tilt it spirals down around their neck, evoking a ruff. It’s a fleeting trad gesture in an arrestingly modern vision.
When I meet Saarinen in his company’s Helsinki office, he says the original intention was to create a “Macbeth landscape” and to prevent audiences being “distracted” by their assessment of conventional leading performances. Then the idea hit him: “What if we are all Macbeths in this scene? It’s ambitious. Many people warned me that it sounds dangerous. They say, too: why are you bringing in a juggler? I saw them perform in Montreal and I just thought: this person is a Macbeth.”
Sharing the lead roles of the Macbeths among more than one person removes gender-based sentiments in a production that, Saarinen explains, also features non-binary actors. Greed and manipulation are, after all, not behaviours reserved for one gender. While Baran’s adaptation “provides a soil for dance, circus and verbal interpretation”, mounting such a bold version remained a little nerve-racking, says Saarinen. “Macbeth is such a classic and everyone [in the audience] has such strong expectations.”
Saarinen’s Macbeth is a collaboration with TTT, one of Finland’s biggest theatres, which is based in Tampere, in the country’s Lakeland region. In 2020, he worked with them on a rock musical of Hamlet, teaching the actors his “Tero technique” approach to performance. Iiris Autio, managing director of Tero Saarinen Company, recalls how both collaborations broke down barriers between dance and theatre. “Sometimes we have this hierarchy that theatre is here [she raises an arm up] and dance is there [the arm goes straight down]. But in this production it’s equal. Everyone can see that the dancers are not second-class performers. It’s an amalgamation of art forms.”
This democratic spirit pervades their headquarters, too: directly across the hallway from the administrative office is the company’s rehearsal studio, huge windows letting dancers and desk workers clearly see each other. It sends an important message at a time when dance’s traditional top-down power structures are being interrogated. “This has been our ethic from the beginning: we are equal,” says Autio. “We need to collaborate well and share the mission and values together throughout the organisation.” Plus, when she’s applying for various pots of funding, seeing the dancers rehearse gives her a lift.
For Saarinen, this layout is related to his belief in Wagner’s model of Gesamtkunstwerk, a complete artwork bringing together multiple disciplines. “It’s important for the next generations to understand that we need each other to make dance healthier. Everybody talks about a ‘safe space’ but we talk about ‘brave space’. That is more daring, more enabling – you’re safe to make leaps in the dark. We are supposed to innovate and take this art form to new places.”
The office is on the edge of Helsinki’s centre, in the Cable Factory, which was Finland’s biggest building when it opened 70 years ago. Once a production site for marine cables and home to Finland’s first supercomputer, it is now a cultural centre. The company set up their HQ here in 2019. Three years later Dance House Helsinki, the country’s first major venue purely for dance, designed by the architects JKMM and ILO, opened its doors. It is a dream come true for Saarinen and Autio who have been working together for more than 20 years and whose company is one of the venue’s programme partners, along with Zodiak Centre for New Dance and Dance Theatre Hurjaruuth. Macbeth is currently running on its main stage, which is now a permanent home for a company whose productions were previously scattered across the city’s theatres.
Finland’s dance community has “worked hard for this” says Saarinen of the strikingly handsome new venue with mighty steel entrance walls and a dotty facade studded with aluminium discs. “Norway and Sweden already have dance houses and now we are part of that chain,” Saarinen continues. “So if, for example, there is a British company coming to Norway and Sweden, we can connect and be part of that touring schedule.” Autio suggests that Helsinki is “maybe 20 years behind London” in terms of dance’s standing.
London played a key role in the company’s success. The enthusiastic response to their performances in 2001 at Queen Elizabeth Hall helped them make the case for funding from the Finnish government. The company had survived without any such assistance since it started in 1996 and relied heavily instead on what Autio calls Saarinen’s “fan club” from his earlier career as a ballet dancer.
Welcoming others to Dance House Helsinki, along with staging their own productions, must be a major mind shift for a company more used to visiting other theatres, I suggest. “Totally,” says Saarinen. “It gives some kind of comfort and feels like you have not just worked in vain. At the beginning, of course, you only think of yourself and your company. But then you see the possibility to help the whole field of dance. For many people, dance still has one taste. But it has all these flavours and frequencies, temperaments and possibilities.”
In its own TSC Studio, the company runs residencies including one for sound designers to explore the possibilities of immersive dance. “We are looking for visionary people who believe in enhancing dance and taking it to new places,” says Saarinen.
Both Autio and Saarinen talk passionately about shoring up Finland’s dance industry. Protecting talent in their sector was pivotal during Covid when workers across the arts demonstrated in front of Helsinki’s parliament house, all wearing black, calling for support. “It was so powerful. They realised that this is a big business field and gives work to all these people in Finland. After that we got good support. Financially we did OK and freelancers were supported.”
Alongside subsidy, philanthropy remains essential – “it’s a radical act, to give money,” says Saarinen – and they are determined to keep ticket prices low, including pay-what-you-can options. The audience of the future needs to be nurtured as much as the creatives. The immediate day-to-day activities of any arts organisation can be all-consuming but this company aims to take a long view.
For example: “Contemporary dance lacks so much if we don’t bring our classics back,” suggests Autio. “It can’t always be new, new, new. Theatres and orchestras can always attract audiences with the classics, but classics only become classics through performances. If you only do five performances of a show, it might be beautiful but it doesn’t grow. It starts to bloom after many more. Some of Tero’s pieces have been performed more than 100 times. It’s a living art form.” Saarinen nods in agreement: “It’s not fast food, this profession!”
As well as recording and streaming their performances, the company are exploring new ways to document the mood in which productions were created, interviewing dancers and crew extensively about their thoughts. The performing arts are inherently ephemeral, they recognise, but a lot can be done to help inform future stagings.
“There are great choreographers in Finland whose work has never been seen outside the country and they have passed away,” reflects Saarinen. “Others, who are still living, have got tired of this constant struggle. You work your whole life for dance and it just evaporates? That doesn’t make sense. We needed a space, a building, to provide longevity, legacy, future. It’s not to become a museum for my work but a platform or a beehive, if you like. The art form must go forward.”
• Macbeth is at Dance House Helsinki until 22 March and will then tour. Chris Wiegand’s trip was provided by the Finnish Institute and Helsinki Partners.
