Paulina Ahokas, the director of Tampere Hall, started a discussion on social media, where she regretted that Finnish popular dance is being neglected, even though it forms a large part of the dance field.
Last at the weekend, Finland won gold and silver in the modern and jazz dance world championships in De Panne, Belgium. The wins came in two different adult first series.
DCA Ensemble brought home gold in the contemporary and jazz dance adult small group series, which emerged as the winner among 45 other groups.
Behind the choreography of DCA Ensemble is Alex Komulainen, who is currently making a career in the United States and is already a world-class star. Komulainen has danced, among other things by The Weeknd on video.
The contemporary dance group StepUp Trainees took silver in the adult composition series. StepUp Trainees made it to the top three out of 26 groups.
So Finnish dance is alive and well.
For some reason, few people know about it.
I was dancing Tampere-talo's CEO worried about the situation Paulina Ahokas started a discussion on Tuesday about the appreciation of the dance industry for its own on his Facebook wall in his published writing.
“Something really needs to be done about this now: Finland wins gold and silver in the world dance championships in two different adult categories, and the Dance Information Center (Circus & Dance Info) or FDO [Finnish Dance Organization FDO ry] does not say or inform anything about it, and thus the media does not wake up to this at all,” Ahokas writes.
Ahokas says on the phone that the field of Finnish “popular dance” (internationally known as Performing Arts) is so important in Finland that it should also be visible in public.
According to Ahokka, “popular dance” makes up about 80-85 percent of the Finnish dance field in terms of amateurs, professionals, and turnover.
An eager one raises the debate about popular and classical, a division that has marked the field of music in particular for centuries.
Throughout the ages, classical music has been seen as a more valuable, serious art than popular music, while popular music has been considered inferior because of its entertainment.
This same thinking can now be seen reflected in dance.
Ahokas writes in his publication that leaving dance aside from public recognition is the same as saying “that Paula Vesala no skill because he makes popular music”.
An eager one compares the current state of dance with the state of the music industry a couple of decades ago.
“The Finnish music information center at that time only focused on art music.”
Then the camp of popular music professionals joined forces and founded Music Export Finland.
Today, Music Finland exports and develops both classical and popular music.
However, Ahokas says that he believes that change is coming.
He says that many different parties, such as the Center for the Promotion of Art, have already contacted him.
Dance school DCA's DCA Ensemble is the first Finnish team to win a gold medal in that series.
Dance school owner Anitra Ahtola says that he was very grateful for Ahokka's opening the conversation. He has shared Ahokka's text on Facebook and, according to him, countless dancers have also done so.
Ahtola also thinks that dance is not valued enough, even though we have numerous successful dancers and choreographers, not to mention huge numbers of enthusiasts.
He would like the subject to be noticed more in the media, because Finland has achieved numerous international awards in the field of dance, among other things, and has placed well in competitions in various sports.
Dance is like an interloper in the field of art. It is both sport and art, but at the same time not just either.
Anitra Ahtola sees that the difficulty of compartmentalization is one of the reasons that “popular dance” has remained in the dark.
Finland executive director of STOPP ry, the association of dance schools Milla Malmberg states that it is often difficult for dance to reach the same line in terms of visibility as, for example, music, which has long traditions and a dominant position in the performing arts.
It can be seen in funding and valuation.
Still, Malmberg feels that many things in the field of dance have changed and improved considerably in recent years. For him, the discussion within the field of dance teaching between actors of different sports is “already very equal”.
Malmberg represents the field of basic dance education, where activities are based on the basics of the National Board of Education's curricula, which are currently from 2017. At that time, according to Malmberg, a significant change took place.
At that time, the categorizations of different dance genres, which had valued the genres in relation to each other, were removed from the curricula. Art and popular dance became equal.
“It has made a great change to the field, that all sports are now equally valuable,” says Malmberg.
Of everything despite this, Malmberg would also like even more public appreciation for dance, because according to him, the field of Finnish dance is doing well.
“In principle, every art form would need more appreciation. Finnish dance is doing really well in the world, so it should be in the headlines.”
It's about resources, which are very small in dance.
According to Malmberg, only a small part of STOPP ry's member educational institutions fall within the scope of the Ministry of Education and Culture's organizing permit.
“It means the same as the state share.”
According to Malmberg, there is a large deficit in the number of state cooperative schools.
“Of course, the view of art and culture in general is financially challenging, we make no exception to that. There aren't many resources, let's go hard.”
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