Choreographed by Mirva Mäkinen, the piece features two founding members of the Keskellä collective, dance artists Rebecca Laube-Pohto and Mimmi Salo, and Helsinki-based dance artist Pinja Grönberg. The music is by Tapani Rinne and the lighting design by Lasse Saari.

Keep Searching is a dance work about physical dialogue, contact and closeness. The work is based on partnering, touch and intimacy between the dancers.

Keep Searching is a commissioned work by choreographer Mirva Mäkinen, PhD in dance art, for the Keskellä collective in Central Finland. Keep Searching is a semi-improvisational performance in which three dancers and a musician are given space to make choices within the predetermined structure of the work and to rhythm the piece in a meaningful way. The mutual listening and presence of the dance trio expands the complexity of movement dynamics, opening up the possibilities of partnering towards a flowing dance. Through touch, sensation and the sharing of body weight, the dancers in the piece engage in a physical negotiation that varies from falling, reaching, rolling, and a soft way of lifting the other dancer. On stage, musician Tapani Rinne reacts to the dancers, sometimes consciously inflating the space, sometimes bringing the listener within human reach.

Mirva Mäkinen is a choreographer, doctor of dance, who works extensively as a teacher, choreographer and dancer. She specialises in contact work and improvisation. Mäkinen received her PhD in contact improvisation somaesthetics in 2018. She has taught dance internationally in around 40 countries.

Musician Tapani Rinne is a composer and producer who has become known for his experimental and innovative style of playing the saxophone and clarinet. Rinne is a founding member of RinneRadio.

Pinja Grönberg is a Helsinki-based freelance dance artist. She graduated from the Stockholm University of the Arts in 2017 with a BA in Dance. Pinja has worked in the free field of contemporary dance as a dancer and performer with a variety of choreographers and ensembles.

Keskellä collective is a multi-artistic contemporary dance collective based in Jyväskylä, Finland, which produces dance with new outputs in addition to traditional stage works.

The artistic directors of Keskellä-kollektiv are Mimmi Salo and Rebecca Laube-Pohto, dance artists who have returned to Jyväskylä after having been inspired from around the world. They want to create transformative art in the Central Finland region and invite artists from different disciplines to work with them.

Photo by Iida Liimatainen