Yhteisö tanssii ry omisti Liikettä lainaksi -yhteisötanssifestivaalilla juhlaseminaarin Kirsi Heimosen muistoksi.
Yhdistyksen hallituksen jäsen Riina Hannuksela osallistui muistotilaisuuteen aiemmin Taideyliopiston Teatterikorkeakoululla ja piti siellä muistopuheen:
To honour Kirsi’s legacy in Finnish Dance, I contacted Marjo Hämäläinen (in Tampere) and Christopher Thomson (in London), the honorary members of the Community Dance Association in Finland. As a member and a former chair of the same association, I have been involved in many discussions about the history of community dance and the development of the association in Finland. I have an idea of how everything started and evolved. I was never there, but Chris and Marjo were with Kirsi.
My story with the association started in 2016, and I remember Kirsi’s presentation at the Community Dance Festival in Tornio-Haparanda. It was about ethics in dance. For me, it marked a milestone. I felt enlightened and relieved; for once, somebody was talking about the questions that had bothered me when working with people who might be in a vulnerable position in life or in a context where dance was just visiting. For many years, we never got to know each other with Kirsi professionally until I got accepted to the doctoral program at this institution. Kirsi became my supervisor. She was very kind and supportive, and I miss her deeply.
Now, I will read you the words of Chris and Marjo.
For Kirsi From Chris:
In late 1997 or early 1998 Kirsi walked into my office at The Place, in London, and asked if I would be interested in contributing to a short course about community dance, which as a professional field of work had been developing in the UK since the 1980s. Till 1991 I had been director of the Community Dance course at Laban, where Kirsi later took her MA, graduating in 1993. The training in Helsinki – a series of short courses over three months – ran at intervals through autumn 1998. I taught for a week, and Kirsi was my course director. We all had a great time.
In my memory Kirsi is always smiling, and has bright twinkle in her eye. She is energetic, focused, earnest, rigorous. The sessions are enjoyable and in the lunch breaks I become used to seeing the students looking up at the sky, eyes closed, trying to make the most of the late summer sun.
Following Kirsi’s initiative the Community Dance Association came to be set up here in Finland, and Kirsi was one of those who contributed much to its development and helped articulate its philosophy and practice. She also became one of two particularly close friends who over the next 25 years brought something very special to my life and professional practice. Thanks to the work of the Association and its members I came to Finland infrequently but fairly regularly. When she and I met, we rarely talked about personal things, but primarily about the work. Kirsi was always reflective, thoughtful — challenging herself and by implication the rest of us. Intellectually she grew and developed her research; I did my best to keep up with her when we talked about phenomenological approaches to dance.
When she started her work at the Deaconess Institute, this was practice we often discussed. I couldn’t observe the work as it was private, but she described it and we talked about the lived experience of dance and its relationship with memory and communication, linking this to our experiences of work in different situations. But alongside the intellectual discussion, what particularly stayed with me was the fact that she didn’t refer to those she worked with as ‘participants’ or ‘residents’, but rather they were “my friends”. “I dance with my friends and we have tea together.” Her values – the importance of community, the dignity of every individual, inclusion and empowerment – underpinned her work. They were very much aligned with those of the Institute, and were also key values of community dance as we were all, I think, trying to articulate them, and embody them.
This might sound strange, but I think Kirsi helped me understand what it means to be good. Not just good as in nice, or kind or skilful or even moral. But the kind of good that is fiercely honest, ethical, rigorous and self-challenging. Perhaps in the end, her heart failed her. But in life her heart – her good heart– never failed. She was brave and admirable, serious and demanding but compassionate, highly intelligent and at the same time modest. I’m still learning from her. And that smile!
For Kirsi from Marjo:
The Community Dance Association would not have been born without Kirsi. I studied in her brilliantly planned Community Dance Training in the autumn of 1998. At the end of the training, I proposed to the participants the establishment of a community dance association with Kirsi as its chair. Kirsi did not agree to become the chair. Eventually, she agreed to be vice chair. We needed her knowledge, wisdom and experience about the values, principles and methods of community dance.
In 1999, we–the founding members of the association–carefully considered the rules and principles under Kirsi’s knowledgeable guidance. The association was registered in 2000, and our work began with small steps. We were a good team with Kirsi; she was a vice chair, and I was the chair for 15 years. Kirsi wrote press releases, activity reports, and grant applications.
In the ninth operational year of the association, there was a crisis and fatigue, a desire to break away from the common activity. Kirsi wrote on December 6, 2009: ”We have been able to fight against prejudice, it will certainly continue and require work. Does it unite or divide us? We have been working things out slowly, with time. Art comes in as an avalanche to institutions, workplaces, and companies. We each have the necessary skills to do it. Do we also take the ethical responsibility and power to share know-how and speak on behalf of the association?”
We overcame the crisis, and the following year the first national Community Dance Festival in Tampere took place. Kirsi was my teacher, and I was a student. She was a patient, gentle teacher who shared all her knowledge and skills with generosity. I am forever grateful to her for that. It was a gift from her. Kirsi was also my friend, with whom we also shared our private joys and sorrows. Even now, her happily laughing face comes to mind when I am thinking of her.