Phantom Limb
A solo work of shadows, trajectories and body extensions.
Synopsis
The performer has an extra limb. It’s so familiar that it might share his heartbeats, and yet uncannily foreign.
The performance situation is intimate and voyeristic as if it happens in a room with paper thin walls that let the voices of neighbours pass through. A solitary human figure reacts to the sounds that penetrate the space like they would originate in himself. He transforms from one speaker to another, listens, moves on tiptoe. The sound is produced in the immediate vicinity, yet in another reality, in a past time, and in a different culture. The foreign language of recorded speech is cut short by sudden sighs and croaks. Invisible horrors and pleasures take over the stage.
The performer balances with agile and shaky steps on the verge of shamelessness. Love and narcissism intermix to concoct a phantom pain that targets an absent beloved as one’s own bodypart. Can the yearned other be reached by becoming her? The gaze in the mirror replies through an unrecognizable mask in a stolen voice.
Fragments of soundscape are borrowed from a 1960’s Japanese counter culture film. The Funeral Parade of Roses by Toshio Matsumoto is a mixture of passionate fiction and seemingly documentary interviews of characters with diverse gender identities active in the underground and queer subcultures.
This is circus artist Ville Walo’s third solo performance. Waloville premiered in 2002 as the first full length juggling show ever made in Finland. Walo’s next solo Mortimer in 2010 combined narrative object choreographies with digital sensors and projections. The third leg of the development summarizes the distance travelled in the last ten years toward the yet uncharted territories of performing art.
Premiere in January 2020, WHS Teatteri Union, Helsinki.
Gallery
For presenters & programmers
Phantom Limb is aimed at venues and festivals looking for risk-taking, high-precision solo work that expands the notion of juggling and contemporary circus. The piece can be programmed in contemporary circus, theatre or performance art contexts, and works especially well in intimate black box or cinema-like venues.
Technical rider — short version
- Duration Approx. 50 minutes, no interval
- Stage Minimum 8 m (width) × 6 m (depth), black box, full blackout
- Audience Flexible seating, ideal 20–200 spectators
- Sound Quality stereo PA with sub preferred. Playback from computer; sound design is an integral part of the work.
- Lights Basic theatre rig (approx. 20-25 units). Atmospheric, precise cues; adapts to house plot.
- Crew 1 performer + 1 technician (can operate lights & sound)
- Setup / strike Setup approx. 4-6 h · Strike approx. 1-2 h
- Language Non-verbal / English-friendly context and materials
Press & reviews
Excerpts from the review in Helsingin Sanomat (Jussi Tossavainen, 19.1.2020):
“If Ville Walo didn’t exist, he would have to be invented. He is a phenomenon on the Finnish art field, making Finnish contemporary circus so original, genuine and peculiar, that without him the genre would be weak and bland. Walo makes circus dada, surprising and strange.”
“Phantom Limb has developed as far from traditional juggling, as is even possible. It’s visual theatre, in that the performer himself is the object, manipulating himself.”
“With his third limb he is at the same time crude and very humane. The performance has a cocktail of oddity and familiarity to an extent that makes it wonderfully captivating. At least it differs from the customary, and therefore fulfills one of art’s purposes.”
HELSINGIN SANOMAT – Contemporary circus review
A more extensive press kit, including the full review in Finnish / English and additional
materials, is available on request:
contact@w-h-s.fi
Credits
Concept & performance: Ville Walo
Set & costume design: Anne Jämsä
Lighting design: Eero Alava
Sound design: Lau Nau & Pekko Käppi
Production: WHS
