Marje Hirvonen
bangaloREsident@Attakkalari Centre for Movement Arts

Mass movement:
Dancer-choreographer Marje Hirvonen will work with (non-) dancers to create a contemporary dance performance, based on the relation between an individual and a mass. She investigates masses of people, and attempts to redefine these terms through the body from an internal perspective.

Marja-Leena (Marje) Hirvonen was born in Finland but lives in Cologne since autumn 2008. She studied contemporary dance at the University for Music and Dance Cologne, successfully completing the course in 2012. Before her studies, Marje had already worked and performed with the dance ensembles Cat People and Step Up-dancers in Finland. She had also trained youth groups. In the second year of her studies she spent four weeks in India, in Chennai, learning the Indian martial art Kalarippayat and the classic dance forms Mohiniyattam and Bharatanatyam.
 
Since her graduation she has worked as dancer/co-choreographer on a variety of
projects in cooperation with artists from the most diverse disciplines: dance, installation, design, music, physical theatre, video and photography. Both in North Rhine-Westphalia as well as abroad. Various forms of theatre have always fascinated Marje, in Amsterdam she worked with Jacob Ahlbom, who has established a very unique style in the field of physical theatre.
 

In the framework of the programme for young choreographers, ʻʻWerkstückʼʼ, which is initiated and managed by Tanzquartier Vienna, she created her first work, a solo ''origin – sin – body''. This solo enjoyed the support of the Akademie der Künste der Welt and was presented in Cologne. Her first Duet ''togetherness” with Markus Tomczyk was presented, among others, at the dance festival 638 Kilos Dance. Her first full-length project ''Trinity'' for four performers was financed by four different institutions and was received with enthusiasm. In June 2017 ''Trinity” was invited to Krefeld to the FIRST STEPS-Festival. In 2016, her concept ''RAVE'' was selected and produced with twelve dancers/participants in the framework of the New Talents - Cologne Biennale - Festival.
 
In addition to choreography Marje Hirvonen, performs herself in many different projects, including being since four years a member of both the Group Fantastic5 (an urban dance group), as well as the FREIRAUM-Ensemble that creates site-specific contemporary dance performances annually. Marje Hirvonen has performed in various music videos and in addition to acting, she has also created in 2017 a choreography for the music video ''No'' of the band Bukahara with 70 volunteers. She produces and shows her work regularly in Tanzfaktur in Cologne.
 
In March 2017 she organised a small dance event/festival with live music, and various performances, including her new premiere, a dance-theatre piece with Nella Turkki about utopia and homeland. Her interests lie in general in the current, social (-critical) topics, that she observes in her environment and comments on them - in one way or another - in her work. Marje positions herself as an artist somewhere between dance, theatre and performance.
 
In 2017 she was selected with her concept of ''fame - when I still thought I would become famous'' for a programme called WEST OFF, that produces dance in three different institutions in Cologne, Dusseldorf and Bonn.In the summer of 2017 she is acting in several short films with and among others Uwe Repschlager and the graduates of the Art University of Media in Cologne.