Vespro della Beata Vergine in the Cable Factory's Pannuhalli, the 22nd of April, 2018

Zodiak – the Centre of New Dance and Helsinki Baroque Orchestra perform a few times in Pannuhalli of the Cable Factory Claudio Monteverdi’s “Vespro della Beata Vergine” from 1610. The work is a collection of ecclesiastical music and in addition to Helsinki Baroque Orchestra there are three dancers and some singers involved. The choreography is made by Anna Mustonen and the costume design was by Piia Rinne (it was – to put it mildly – rather peculiar).

Pannuhalli suited the work very well, since the stage was big enough for this biggish group of moving performers and the high ceiling gave a nice acoustic effect. It was also possible to place the audience all around the stage, which – at least in theory – gave all an equally good chance to hear and see the performance.

The music of this work consists of lots of different styles and I was not quite sure what to expect, when I heard that there would be also dancers in the performance. The work was even more crossover than I had imagined: the dancers also sang and the singers (and musicians, too, a little) danced. Every now and then there was so much going on, on the stage, that I simply couldn’t follow everything, so I made a decision to concentrate on the singers. And why ever not, when the singers were that good. For example, my great favourite Tuuli Lindeberg was there and her voice keeps of enthralling me. Teppo Lampela’s alto-role was rather insignificant, but his dance choreography was fun to follow. My favourite part, however, was Juho Punkeri’s part in the “Audi Coelum” motet. That was enjoyable to listen to!

As mentioned I did not have time to follow the dancers so much that I could comment them in any way. But the choreographies of the singers were interesting in my opinion. I didn’t in any way yearn for them moving, but since in this work they had to, it was exciting to see how different types of ways to move can the same music create. There were tons of different types of swaying and leaping involved. It was, of course, fairly clear that they were not professional dancers, but neither did they need to be.