René Dombrowski

cultural project management

Miika Hyytiäinen & Jaakko Nousiainen – La Figure de la Terre

A production by Dag Lohde and René Dombrowski. Co-produced by SOPHIENSAÆLE. Funded by the Capital Cultural Fund (Hauptstadtkulturfonds), the Schering Foundation, the KONE Foundation, and the Finnish Institute. With kind support from the Karl Hofer Society, Berlin University of the Arts, and Uferstudios.

Trailer

trailer on vimeo

Summary

The French mathematician Pierre Louis de Maupertuis travels to Lapland in 1736/37, to the far European north beyond the Arctic Circle. His aim is to determine whether the Earth is flattened at the poles or at the equator. There he encounters Christine Planström, a woman from the northern wilderness. He becomes captivated by her, and after successfully completing his research (keyword: mandarine), she accompanies him to Paris. There, he rises to become a star of the salons, while she struggles with the norms and codes of high society.

The contemporary music theatre work La Figure de la Terre by Miika Hyytiäinen and Jaakko Nousiainen explores these two journeys into unfamiliar worlds and the demands that a hostile environment places on survival.

Hyytiäinen works with musical quotations from the Baroque period and melodic lines drawn from traditional Lapland music, interweaving them with digitally generated noises, sounds, and echoes that interact with the musicians. The performance is accompanied by a real-time video performance by Mia Mäkelä.