Väkevä Collective

Väkevä Collective is a Helsinki-based artist collective that was founded in 2012. The collective, formed by professional artists educated in both folk dance and contemporary dance, was born out of a desire to work with folk dance and approach it through new kinds of methods and questions stemming from contemporary art. The common factor throughout the work of the collective is a vision of folk dance as a potential part of the canon of contemporary art and a love for constant experimentation and wonderment.

Integral to the work Väkevä are collective, temporally loose and multidisciplinary processes that move boldly in the cross section between art, research and documentation.

Through their work with performance and teaching, the collective has proposed new ways of operating and thinking to the field of folk dance. Open-mindedness, playfulness and at times even intentional provocation are some of the ways in which the group attempts to bring new life to the tradition of folk dance, keeping it ever-changing and interesting. The collective wants to show that contemporary performance drawing from and informed by folk tradition can serve as a site for current, topical thought.