Otto Akkanen (FI)
About Otto
Otto Akkanen (Helsinki) is a dancer, body worker and osteopath in Training.
Otto has danced Contact Improvisation and improvisation for more than 20 years, taught CI for over 14 years and finds it still hugely interesting and inspiring.
He holds a BA in Social Work (2001), a dance diploma from Outokumpu (2006) and a MA in Contemporary Dance Education from Hochschule für Musik und darstellende Kunst Frankfurt (2015).
"My focus and interest in CI has been and still is moving. How can I organise myself, how do we organise our movements together?
Creating support and being on that support. Going against, creating surprises, playing.
How my movements change when I change my concept of the movement or myself. Swirls, twirls, cycles, waves."
Intensive with Otto: Manipulation and control vs. force
1. Manipulation… arranging the world or arranging yourself?
We think that we manipulate the world, but the world equally manipulate us. How are we manipulated, and how we could manipulate our surroundings. Conceptual work, Highly trusting your willingness and capability to research.
2. Control Vs. Force
You need force when you have lost control (of course all this depends how we define the words, but that’s always the case). So, are you in control of your dance, or are you forcing your way through it. Like previous, a research.
Neither of these classes are labs, but I do think that CI is (also) a research form. But the ability to research can be easier if you have some knowledge about the “basics” of CI.
