BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION    Heini Nukari and Anna Jankowska founded TRAVA in 1998. Both began their artistic education in the area of music in their native countries Finland and Poland. Heini Nukari finally graduated from the School for New Dance Developement in Amsterdam and Anna Jankowska completed her studies at the Theater School Studio AS in Warsaw. They have been working in Berlin since 2000, where they became known with the piece “Hahmomania” at the TANZTAGE. “No Time for Wasa”, a piece commissioned by the “TanzWerkstatt Berlin, premiered at the “Internationalen Tanzfest – Tanz im August 2001” and toured seven countries as the German contribution to “Dance Roads”. After a guest performance at the TanzTendenzen in Greifswald, TRAVA was invited to work with the Ballet Vorpommern whom they developed “Gleis Novi Sad” in 2004. Guest performances have led TRAVA to Estland, Finland, France, Great Britain, Italy, Yugoslavia, Canada, Luxembourg, Austria, Poland, Portugal, Spain and Switzerland. “Station Kautschuk” received the first prize in the International Choreography Competition of TanzImpulse Salzburg.The latest productions were “Kuloflux”, premiered in TANZTAGE 2005 and “Hella!Helle!”, premiered in July 2005 at the Theater Sophiensaele in Berlin.

 

APPROACH TO WORK   The source for TRAVA’s ideas lies within their own bodies and is like a spool of film – continuously recording and storing images, sounds, feelings, atmosphers and dreams. Like scientists, TRAVA investigate even the tiniest elements in this archive in order to discover the elementary and discard the unnecessary. The best body and sound ideas often develop in moments of total exhaustion and during bouts of stillness after long periods of highly disciplined work. The developement process of a piece can therefore be summarized  as follows: chaos - order – chaos = performance.

At the moment TRAVA is expanding the work to other areas of art. The latest works include cooperation with a musician and a film maker.

 

REPERTORY

Hella!Helle! (2005), Duet with film, 50 min. 

Kuloflux   (2005), 1 dancer and a musician, 25 min.

Gleis Novi Sad (2004), for dancers Ballet Vorpommern, Greifswald, 35 min.       

Trashfox & Hangedman (1999/2003), Duet, 30 min.

Kindasorta Concert (2003), 3 musicians and 2 singers, 60 min.

Tonic (2002), Duet, 40 min.

No Time for Wasa (2001), Duet, 30 min. 

Hahmomania (2000), Duet, 40 min.

Station Kautschuk (1998), Solo, 20 min.

 

Interview about Heini Nukari by Katja Werner, Dance europe, december 2002 

Let a cloak of merciful forgetting be wrapped around this year’s German dance platform. Save for that strange visitor, half-naked, and half-way between cute and menacing. Who’s that? Human, animal, extraterrestrial? He, she, it all alone on ‘Station Kautschuk’. The shaved girl in rubber boots and sunglasses is an intrauterine gameboy baby. She fist fights invisible enemies with robotic precicion. Squelches about and squishes, creaks and screams through her bloated cheeks. Talking about the future of dance, this performance sure looks futuristic.

But no: “I’m not a sci-fi fan.I never read any of those books. My work looks like it, I know. Seems to be coming from within. But I don’t identify with those themes. In fact, I don’t identify with any human themes. Maybe that’s why people get the impression of sci-fi. Human or psychological topics don’t interest us, really.” ‘Us’ that’s Heini Nukari, born 1972 in Helsinki, now homebased in Berlin, and Anna Jankowska from Warsaw. Together they are the very hopeful, new insider tip on the European festival circuit: theatregroup TRAVA. True, the creatures they’ve created in their five repertory pieces since 1998 are definitely “other”: TRAVA are concentrating on something that “lies between”. After all, what is humanity? And hasn’t every relationship been duet-danced to death? “It’s really too narrow, it you take the usual concepts”, affirms Nukari.

No danger ot that with TRAVA. The solo ‘Station Kautschuk’(1998) sports the product of a marriage between an incensed cyborg and an androgynous underage souldier. What creeps onto stage of the duet ‘Hahmomania’(2000) bears the aspect of something escaped from a galactical terrarium. Here Heini and Anna are the two sides of Hahmo, a being that transforms dreams into food. A parasite of imagination, the glittery dual monster doesn’t give an explanation for its motives, but the otherwordly angled moves are mesmerising just the same.

T he two boxer-like morons in ‘No Time for Wasa’(2001) don’t slide and crawl around with that same elegance at all. Their goal is not clear, bit it’s somehow related to a stainless steel bedframe and a musical instrument made from the famous round Swedish rye bread. A they monkey around to the sound of their own voices moaning, grunting, and humming on tape, they make evolution look like a joke. The children of King Wasa got as far as trained chimps in leather pants. Again, very androgynous. Zoo meets genre discourse? Far from it, Nukari shakes her head. Too academic. The issue of femininity was quiclky resolved for the two tiny, bold, athletic women. For their purposes, the striking resemblance was useful, but to look either distinctly female or male wouldn’t have been. Incidentally, the look doesn’t advertise style preferences beyond that. There is no trademark movement vocabulary. The TRAVA creatures always have their own dimentions, bodies, and movement styles invented to fit them. “Even the sounds they emit have to be different and peculiar. They are entities with their very own worlds, own rules and manners.

That’ what we are looking for. It makes work long, but we have to know exactly what this new piece, this new world will be like. And what sets it apart from the others.”

The spectrum is wide. Both women have a solid music background, as well. Heini started out as a gymnast, acting and dancing all through Kallio grammar school in Helsinki, and after a few years of searching went to the Amsterdam School for New Dance Developement. She, like Anna, played the piano for ten years. Though not a trained dancer from the onset, Anna, the professional singer and theatre actress, has studied butoh. All these influences merge in their work, and vary with every piece. Their latest to date,’Tonic’, stays abstract and minimalistic, but in addition to dance and music uses more songs and text. “This one is very personal. It’s an experiment with our inhibitions, smallness, and anxieties”. Their next premiere in Janyary 2003 will be a concert.

With TRAVA Heini Nukari is a rising star in the sometimes glum German fringe dance. And she’s Finnish. Is there something finnish in her work? “I think so. Personally, I’m very Finnish. Can’t flee that!” she laughs. “Yet, somehow, new places have always been related to finding freedom in work. Landscape influences me a lot. The pieces I made in Berlin and Amsterdam, I couldn’t have made in Finland. But maybe the roots show.” More concretely? “The wailing women of Karelia have inspired some of my work. Like the scream in ‘Station Kautschuk’. There aren’t many left who practise that tradition. And the shamanistic side of Finland has always intrigued me. Mysticism. Anything related to Finnish nature. I’m very close to that. Every July I go back and I absorb the landscape like a film that I play to myself in long winter nights in Berlin.” Oh yes, film. Being a visulal medium it is a dangerous source of inspiration. Heini, who loves everything visual, assures me her pieces are too abstract to copy movie images. Rarely does a film maker come close to her own language:”Just lately I saw Aki Kaurismäki’s latest, ‘Man without past.’ His films are monotonius, very minimalist, thought through. Yet so touching. Not so different from how I want my work to be perceived. There was a scene whare two men shake hands. They come on and leave again. That was pure, one hundred percent perfect choreography. Almost no dialogue. Like watching perfect dance.”

Despite some kindred spirits it seems Heini has found a new home. What does she find in Berlin that she missed in Finland? “Finns are so shy. They don’t assert themselves enough. It’s customary to be always very modest. As an artist, that can get in the way. I had to learn to shed that. It makes it difficult to take a risk. There’s great artistic potential and talent –they shouldn’t be upthight. Maybe it’s not all that different in Germany. But Berlin has been incredibly open. People aren’t nice and welcoming here. On the contrary. But mostly they are down to earth and honest. The energy is good. You’re free to try anything. There ‘s enormous intellectual room for that. And an audience! Although you have to perform at the right venue. Berlin is so big, people won’t cross town to see an off-production.

You know, as a professional I’ve never performed in Finland! Probably, it’s a lot harder to be a pro where you came from. But now I feel ready to perform there. If an opportunity arises, I’d love to.”

The Polish word “trava” means “green grass” and there is no connection whatsoever to the work of Heini and Anna. But it could mean a lot of things, and they like the sound of it. To Heini “it’s something that moves, like an old, battered car keeps going, unvanquished.” Well, it may not be old and battered, but who says it can’t go north?

 

Heini Nukari’s carefully constracted beings

An interview by Minna Tawast in “Finnish Dance in Focus 2003

 “What creeps onto the stage of “Hahmomania”(2000) bears the aspect of something escaped from a galactic terrarium. Here Heini and Anna are the two sides of Hahmo, a being that transforms dreams into food. A parasite of imagination, the glittery dual monster doesn’t give an explanation fot its motives, but the orherwordly angled moves are mesmerising just the same.” This is how Katja Werner describes Finnish dancer-choreographer Heini Nukari’s and the Polish actor-singer Anna Jankowska’s Theatergroup TRAVA in issue 58/2002 of Dance Europe magazine.

Nukari and Jankowska founded their group in 1998 in Berlin, where they both still live. Prior to this, Nukari studied dance at the Amsterdam School for New Dance Developement, a popular destination for young Finnish dancers over the years, while Jankowska studied music and theatre in Warsaw. Nukari also has a strong musical background, and the duo has become one of the stars of the German fringe-dance scene.

- I don’t know whether we are one of the leading groups in off- or fringe-scene, but it’s true that, especially in Berlin, we have an audience of our own that is always eager to see what TRAVA has come up with. A certain unpredictability has played a apart in our success, as we move freely between different genres. When we perform as singers in a rock spectacle, some viewers get enthusiastic, but others get worried that we have stopped dancing, explains Nukari, sounding very Finnish with her stong sense of proportion.

 

The purity of ideas is important

 Heini Nukari was born in 1972 in Helsinki, and she also studied dance at the Dance Departement of the Finnish Theatre Academy. Nukari says that is is easy being Finnish in Germany because Finns hav a good reputation, but she does not want to ride on the coattails of her compatriots’ good name.

- Although it is of course nice that Finnishness creates a certain interest. According to Nukari, Finns are too shy to look after their own best interests. But an artist cannot get very far with that kind of attitude. So Nukari has been forced to give up her modesty. She has founf Berlin an energetic and receptive city, where one can experiment without limitations. Nukari does not think that she could have created her works in Finland.

In this respect she is most likely right, as her works are unlike anything being produced in Finland just now. TRAVA’s artists clearly inhabit their own world, which refers to neither nationality nor an identifiable artistic context. Visula effects are used very sparingly, but the uncannily attractive soundscape is rich and carefully planned. Nukari and Jankowska produce many ot the sounds by themselves: they click their tongues, snapping and clacking, or wail in high notes like old Karelian lamenters.

The two women look like stereotypical European anarchists, with their trained bodies and militant, androgynous looks. But wonderfully they move! Nukari and Jankowska must have watched their fair share of nature documents to learn the animal ability to move only one part of the body in such a functional and sophisticated manner. Together, they form something akin to an organism, with a conscious but inhuman mind of its own.

- It ishard to describe TRAVA’s style in few words. We do not want to commit ourselves to any genre. We value the purity and simplicity of visions, ideas, movement language and sound. We want to do things for the right motives  and believe in what we do. The audience often finds our themes rather abstract and perhaps odd, but the atmosphere in our performances is very powerful, as is our contact with the audience.

 

Neutrally bold 

An intimate contact with the audience is partly created by the fact that the sympathetic creatures on the stage react with their eyes, just like humans, or cartoon characters, although they do not seek direct eye contact with the audience. Another that adds to the sense of communality is the humour; the creature may be unpredictable but they are never threatening. A Finn will also see a funny side of the use of Finnish national icosn such as Wasa rye crispbread in the piece “No Time for Wasa”(2001) or Nokia wellies in Station Kautschuk. All Finns have eaten thir fare share of Wasa crispbread with their school meals, and the Nokia corporation was well known for its practical wellington boots long before anyone had heard of mobile phones.

- Our work is often inspired by dreams and the unconscious, which means that our characters are not necessarily tied to a time or place, neither present times nor Germany. I would like to point out that working in Germany was never a conscious decision, and TRAVA has firm roots in Poland too, with its strong traditions in theatre. The way we look might seem provocative, but our boldheads, for example, are apurely visual and aesthetic choice. Hair would bring far too much psychological material into our performance. We aim for minimalism in everything; we want nothing on stage but the essence, the most important aspects that have been filtered out ot the enormous creative chaos.

In what way is hair psychological?  

- I find that hair is never neutral on stage. It is wither wawing around over –expressively or an effort has been made to tame it or hide it completely with hairpins and sprays. Hair brings an aspect of the performer’s private life to the stage, which sometimes irritates me, although it is not necessarily negative thing in itself. Onthe other hand, in our concert piece we wear haute couture wigs, which is a very conscious choice and changes our image completely.

TRAVA is Polish for “green grass”, and Nukari and Jankowska like the way the word sounds.

- TRAVA has existed for five years, and it’t time for a little break now. We are not working on a large production at the moment; we are concentrating on small-scale performances and tryinh to collaborate more with musicians. We will also be performing things that we have created in recent years. Our next performance will be No Time for Wasa in London at the Barbican Theatre.