Performance in English ( German description here >>> )

Meet Miss Goforit! As a cheerleader gone rogue the performer skates on the slippery surface of identity and conquers attributions to and demands on femininity and humanity with great humour. Following a script of movements the performer goes through 49 actions, 49 movements and a little shouting. The result is a positive yet critical culture of “shouting and moving”.

Maija Hirvanen’s choreographic performance is built around an unhinged female protagonist. ON ICE takes its creative cue from Hirvanen’s time as a cheerleader for the Turun Palloseura national league ice hockey team, while she was studying her serious art degree. Contradictory and absurd, the experience served as the basis of a solo performance created for Anna-Maija Terävä, centering on themes such as achievement, the act of gazing and the process of letting go. The subject matter is explored through a humorous perspective. ON ICE works like a comic strip that is made up out of episodes and associative images.

10 000 people are following an ice hockey game of the Finnish National league teams TPS and HIFK. I’m stepping on the ice with the other cheerleaders, with my very high heels. I clap my hands, Joan Jett’s version of “Shout” is played out loud, a smoke machine pushes clouds inside the light spectacle. The air smells of testosterone, cold beer and popcorn. I’m running on a feeling of strangeness. I’m here, now, but placed outside of myself, alone amongst others. I’m an object to look at. The audience hurrays when the players skate on the ice. I’m a black cobra. I’m inside a wrong skin. (Maija Hirvanen)