Born in Finland, Jalonen is a choreographer and dancer who studied gymnastics and ballet before building a contemporary dance career during her experience throughout Europe. She is currently based in Budapest, where she also directs an educational program for dancers and produces dance festivals.
The Japan premiere of “BEAT ‘I just wish to feel you’” (2019), choreographed, performed, and directed by Jalonen herself in collaboration with Jonas Garrido Verwerft, is a remarkable work that won the Rudolf Laban Award and Aerowaves Best 20. On a bare stage, stands a woman and a man in simple training wear. From there, a breathtakingly physical dance unfolds. Using all of the floor and space, touching and feeling each other, the two bodies move between moments of active and passive, strength and weakness, movement and stillness, without the scheduled harmony of choreography. Their movements are accompanied by a live onstage sound designer, questioning the existing relationship between dance and music. It is an emotional duet, the opposite of digital communication, with colliding flesh and blood and an exchange of emotions.
Jenna Jalonen / Collective Dope
“BEAT ‘I just wish to feel you’”
Asakawa Kanae
“No Way Back”
- 12.10 [Sat] 16:00
- 12.11 [Sun] 16:00
Jenna Jalonen
“BEAT ‘I just wish to feel you’”
- Concept, Direction: Jenna Jalonen
- Creation, Performance: Jenna Jalonen, Jonas Garrido Verwerft
- Live Music Composition: Adrian Newgent
- Lighting Design: Miklós Mervel
- Production Assistant: Kasza Polett
- International Relations: Bush Hartshorn
- Partners: Kinosaki International Arts Center, Aerowaves
- Production: SUB.LAB Event Productions
Co-production: Straatrijk, Workshop Foundation
Supporters: STUK House for Dance, Image & Sound, Life Long Burning, Ultima Vez, Stad Leuven, SÍN Arts Centre, Eva Duda Dance Company / Movein Studio, Cirk la Putyika / Jatka78, EMMI, Trafo House of Contemporary Arts
The production is an official selection of Aerowaves twenty20 Spring Forward
The performance received Rudolf Lában Prize of best contemporary dance performance in 2019
Co-funded by the European Union / Supported by EU-Japan Fest
© Daniel Domolky
Jenna Jalonen
Born in Finland, dancer/choreographer/producer currently based in Hungary. Jalonen studied gymnastics and ballet and has performed in several choreographers’ works in France, Belgium, Germany and Hungary and other countries since 2010. She is also interested in acrobatics, house dance, physical theater and more. In 2018, she co-created “Long time no see !” together with Beatrix Simkó and performed in the official program of the Avignon Festival in 2018. She co-founded <Collective Dope> in Budapest with Nóra Horváth, presenting dance pieces in collaboration with multidisciplinary artists and producing dance festivals.
Her trilogy “I just wish to…”, which includes the piece “BEAT,” explores the extremes of physical expression through the unconscious and conscious, strength and fragility of the body, focusing on modern society and generational themes. Her works have been selected as one of the 20 best productions by Aerowaves (a European dance network) in 2019 and 2020, and continues to gain acclaim.
Asakawa Kanae
This is the latest work by Asakawa Kanae, who received the Outstanding New Artist Prize in YDC Competition II (under 25 year’s old category) in December 2021. The award-winning “O ku” was a solo dance performance that, while choosing the difficult subject of suicide attacks in WWII, drew in the audience by weaving a story through a skillful combination of stage design that gave diverse meanings to an ordinary object: paper. It used dramatic lighting effects, and eloquent bodies that almost spoke in dialogue, to leave a quiet, long-lasting aftertaste in the audience.
Asakawa, who studied rhythmic gymnastics from an early age before swiftly moving on to dance at university, stands out for the precision of her movements and the rigidity and lightness of her body that only a rhythmic gymnastics background can produce. The contrast between this strong body and the theme of the fragility of life, the fear of predestined death, human finitude, and the circle of life and death makes Asakawa’s creations unique. Asakawa’s new work, which “depicts the light and darkness of modern society based on her unique view of life and death,” is performed by a mixed-gender trio who made both the choreography, and stage art as well. Asakawa is one of the choreographers to keep an eye on now.
“No Way Back”
- Choreography: Asakawa Kanae
- Performance: Asakawa Kanae, Ito Sho, Suzuki Rion
Asakawa Kanae
Asakawa Kanae has studied gymnastics since the age of five, and studied contemporary dance at the Department of Performing Arts, in the Faculty of Arts and Information, at Shobi Gakuen University. With her strong physicality, sharpness, lightness, and precise movements cultivated through rhythmic gymnastics, she uses dance to tell poetically developed stories based on her unique view of life and death, such as the transience of life and the finite nature of existence. In addition to choreography, she also works as an artist and draws inspiration from improvised drawings to create her works. In 2021, she won double awards in Competition II (under 25 category) at YDC 2021-DEC, the Outstanding New Artist Prize and the Architanz Artist Support Award . In her award-winning work “O ku,” she chose the theme of life and death in war, and succeeded in telling a deep and lingering story with simple but profound art using paper and dramatic lighting effects.