Staging the Archive: Pre-Performance Photography for The Singing of the Sirens by Heli Keskikallio

  • Choreographer Heli Keskikallio
  • Photographer Giovanni Ambrosio
  • Dancers Johanna Karlberg, Ella-Noora Koikkalainen, Heli Keskikallio and Lotta Suomi
  • Sound designer Miki Brunou
  • Space designer Bea Tornberg
  • Design
#Dance Photography#Giovanni Ambrosio#Heli Keskikallio#Performing Arts#Stage Photography

Research in Motion: Photographing a Dance Work in Progress

In collaboration with choreographer Heli Keskikallio, I staged pre-performance photographs for The Singing of the Sirens in Helsinki. Captured before the live debut, these images build on themes from The Echoes of the Sirens, performed at the Drifts Festival Helsinki in 2023. These images, created before the live presentation, aim to preserve and convey the foundational themes of the work, providing crucial visual assets for future campaigns and documenting the piece’s initial form.

The Role of Staging Photos Before Performance

Staging photos before a performance requires a unique approach, especially when the piece is still evolving. These images are crafted to serve as both promotional material and as an archive of the work’s development. With Keskikallio, we explore how to convey a story in progress, using staged photography to document a work that is both forming and transforming. This method allows the photos to serve as timeless resources for analysis, reflection, and even future adaptations.

Photography as a Living Archive for Dance

By staging photos before a performance, we can address how to archive dance—a medium that vanishes the moment it’s performed. Keskikallio’s dancers embody movements that are archives in their own right, capturing both learned and improvised gestures. Our staged images are designed to hold these fleeting expressions, acting as a bridge between the transient nature of performance and the lasting value of visual documentation.

Why Stage Pre-Performance Images?

  1. Campaign Resources: Staging early images provides immediate material for outreach, introducing audiences to the work’s evolving themes and its relationship to past projects.
  2. A Research Archive: Photographing the piece in progress serves as a reference for understanding how the choreography develops over time, creating a bridge between past and future iterations.
  3. Documenting the Creative Environment: Each image captures not only the dancers but the broader creative setting, reflecting the atmosphere that shapes and inspires the performance.

Expanding the Archive: Pre-Performance Images as Research Tools

Through these staged images, we address questions central to archiving performative art: How can we document the body as it remembers and creates? How do we archive movement when it resists being fixed in place? By capturing The Singing of the Sirens in its early stages, we contribute to a resource that is not only immediate but invites future reflection, allowing the performance’s initial form to resonate long after its live presentation.

  • Choreographer Heli Keskikallio
  • Photographer Giovanni Ambrosio
  • Dancers Johanna Karlberg, Ella-Noora Koikkalainen, Heli Keskikallio and Lotta Suomi
  • Sound designer Miki Brunou
  • Space designer Bea Tornberg
  • Design
#Dance Photography#Giovanni Ambrosio#Heli Keskikallio#Performing Arts#Stage Photography
Staged portrait for The Singing of the Sirens by Heli Keskikallio, visualizing the concept of singing through layered faces and expressions.
Staged portrait for The Singing of the Sirens by Heli Keskikallio, visualizing the concept of singing through layered faces and expressions.
Staged portrait for The Singing of the Sirens by Heli Keskikallio, visualizing the concept of singing through layered faces and expressions.
Staged portrait for The Singing of the Sirens by Heli Keskikallio, visualizing the concept of singing through layered faces and expressions.
Staged portrait for The Singing of the Sirens by Heli Keskikallio, visualizing the concept of singing through layered faces and expressions.
Staged portrait for The Singing of the Sirens by Heli Keskikallio, visualizing the concept of singing through layered faces and expressions.
Staged portrait for The Singing of the Sirens by Heli Keskikallio, visualizing the concept of singing through layered faces and expressions.

Visualizing Singing:  the Staged Portraits

The staged portraits capture the concept of singing through a focus on facial expressions and positioning that evoke breath, resonance, and the internal process of vocalization. Each image presents layers of faces, blending profiles with front-facing views, creating a sense of multiple voices and echoing tones as if the sound of singing reverberates visually.

The closed or half-closed eyes suggest a deep internal focus, as though the singers are immersed in their soundscapes. Meanwhile, the slightly parted lips, varied mouth shapes, and subtle tilts of the head convey the physicality of singing—how the body aligns and adjusts to release sound.

Staged portrait for The Singing of the Sirens by Heli Keskikallio, visualizing the concept of singing through layered faces and expressions.

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