Graduated as a Doctor of Dance from University of Arts in Helsinki in 2018. Her doctoral research is about Somaesthetics of Contact Improvisation. She graduated (MA) from the Dance Department from the University of Arts, Finland in 2000, before that she did masters of Physical Education from University of Jyväskylä.
From 2000 onwards she has been a dance teacher, choreographer and lecturer for dance at the Kallio Upper Secondary School of Performing Arts. She has been teaching in several international dance and contact improvisation festivals. Mirva has been working with with many different dance companies and choreographers, here few of them: Dance company Karttunen Kollektiv (choreographer Jyrki Karttunen), New Circus Company Circo Aereo, choreographer Joona Halonen, Echo Echo dance company (Ireland), collaboration with Frey Faust and collaboration with Joerg Hassmann. At the moment she is working with Finnish choreographer Valtteri Raekallio.
In dance I am interested in the feeling of flow and soft movement. I love to investigate movement, its rhythm and different ways of inhabiting the body. A feeling of dancing is created by being able to switch the body from total relaxation to extreme intensity and tension. I call this the body’s ability to breathe and create movement.
Class in Spiral & Root / 5 days – first week
ESSENCE OF TRACE IN CI Contact improvisation is based on the communication between two (or more) moving bodies that are in physical contact and their combined relationship to the physical laws that govern their movement; gravity, momentum, inertia. The body, in order to feel these sensations, learns to release excess muscular tension and abandon a certain quality of willfulness to experience the natural flow of movement. Contact improvisation often includes rolling, falling, being upside down, following a physical point of contact, supporting and giving weight to a partner. I often like to aim towards movable support and gentle flying technique. This workshop is about learning movement without copying shape or form, but rather to know kinesthetically how to be connected and grounded in dance. Essence of trace in CI could be named also as an embodied anatomy of CI. What do you know already and how can you re-learn in order to improvise?
