Juggler Ville Walo and magician Kalle Hakkarainen combine in their modern circus piece the old circus disciplines of juggling and magic, in very inventive forms, to video projection. The title Odotustila in Finnish stands for a waiting room or a state of waiting or expecting.
New circus is close to dance and theatre. Odotustila is about two men sitting on a bench of a waiting room of a station. Impatient, slow, intense, frustrated waiting turns into physical movement. In a public space the one who waits is at the same time the target of observation and the observer. The large group of people hides one inside it, but at the same time perceives, distinguishes, makes the one who waits feel his loneliness. The station is a centre of encounterings, coincidences, chance, a sort of an intersection of different routes. The stage is a combination of both the waiting room and at the same time a film machinery that manipulates time up in the clock tower of the station. In the performance the illusions of magic and the physical movement of jugglery unite with video image. They form a continuous narrative whole, that is far from unambiguous or everyday reality. The movement of the objects, the images and the dance-like plasticity link through similar forms and subject. The mute, music accompanied theatre is intensive and dreamy.
In Odotustila the circus is not a comic side show, but the most important language of the whole performance. And yet there is a lot of ambivalent humour originating from absurd situations. Aesthetic, dreamy circus depicts states of mind behind the everyday situations. The surrounding world is seen through the distortions and illusions produced by the reflections in the individual's brain. In the entire performance the beauty of mysterious coincidences and the dance-like language of movement are emphasised.
World premiere
26.4.2003 Kiasma-Teatteri