Indulge the Movement - Contemporary Dance for All / Johannes Purovaara

The Indulge the Movement course led by Johannes Purovaara explores warming up as an artistic question through easy movement and togetherness, in the midst of the slowly brightening winter.

Warming up is often considered as something that is done before the actual exercise or dancing, but during this course we spend most of our time practising it. The aim of the course is to bring new perspectives to warming up, and perhaps to learn a new favourite warm-up move.

The class begins with swinging and rolling our bodies and rotating our joints. Then progressing to group exercises during which we try to learn a bit about each other and get into the swings of things together. Gradually, we introduce more complex movement combinations and moving across the space. Most of the exercises are based on foot and hand coordination. Some exercises involve touching the other person's feet, hands, and back. You can always modify the exercises to better suit you. At the end of the class, we throw ourselves into improvisation and allow the warm-up dance and the most comfortable movements to work their way through the body.

During the course, we dance a lot to music, and you can bring your favourite warm-up, movement, or dance music if you wish. The music must be playable, for example, on phone via an aux cable.

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Johannes Purovaara is a dancer, actor, musician, and usher based in Helsinki. In the spring of 2023, Johannes will perform at Zodiak in the piece As time goes by by Jenni-Elina Von Bagh. Beside Von Bagh he has previously worked in collaboration with, for example, Jyrki Karttunen, WAUHAUS collective and Tuomo Railo.

He is also a member of the contemporary theatre company Pyöveli. Purovaara is widely interested in performing, and he has worked on the stages of Zodiak and the Finnish National Theatre as well as on the radio.