This digital EP features the music from Hanna Tuulikki's audiovisual installation Deer Dancer.
The first track introduces the music from Hanna's two-channel film.
In this multi-layered vocal composition created entirely from her own voice, Hanna extends and manipulates her vocal range into 'male' and 'stag' pitches, giving voice to each of the five hybrid deer-man characters in the film – Monarch, Warrior, Young Buck, Fool and Old Sage.
For the second bonus track, Hanna narrates the Deer Dancer film, exploring the space between nature documentary and anthropological account. The text was originally written to be presented as a performance lecture accompanying the film work.
Deer Dancer is a cross-artform project investigating deer mimesis, specifically, representations within dance from across cultures. The work examines how the imitation of deer behaviour constructs ‘wilderness’ as the site for the cultivation of hetero-masculinity and how hunting mythologies shape and impact real ecologies. Exploring the interconnections between the crisis of ecology and the crisis of masculinity, Deer Dancer is an explicit contemporary life-crisis ritual for a damaged planet.
Composed, performed and recorded by Hanna Tuulikki, 2019
Mixed with Pete Smith, 2019
Deer Dancer was originally presented at Edinburgh Printmakers in 2019 as part of Edinburgh Art Festival. The exhibition comprised an audiovisual installation, incorporating music and costumed choreography on film, alongside a series of visual score print works.
Wider project credits:
Performed & directed by Hanna Tuulikki
Character development and choreography by Will Dickie, Peter McMaster and Hanna Tuulikki
Dramaturgy by Peter McMaster
Movement direction by Will Dickie
Director of photography by Andrew Begg
Edited by Laura Carreira and Hanna Tuulikki
On set wardrobe management by Lydia Honeybone
Production management by Amy Porteous
Costumes and print works by Hanna Tuulikki
Costume fabrication assistance by Lydia Honeybone
Developed through conversations and interviews with tradition bearers and academics, including Felipe Molina (Yaqui tradition bearer and translator), Larry Evers (American Indian Studies, The University of Arizona), Jack Brown (Abbots Bromley Horn Dance tradition bearer and historian), Doug and Joyce Gilbert (Trees for Life); by observing a number of dances and participating in rituals, including the Yaqui Deer Dance (Pascua Yaqui Easter ceremonies, Old Pascua, Tucson, Arizona, March 2018), Abbots Bromley Horn Dance (Abbots Bromley, September 2017 and September 2018); and direct learning with Sandra Robertson (Highland Fling), Indalecio 'Carlos' Moreno Matuz (Yaqui Deer Dance), Gary Faulkenberry (animal tracking, March, July 2018), Allan Common (deer stalking at Trees for Life, Dundreggan Conservation Estate, autumn 2017 and autumn 2018).
Commissioned by Edinburgh Printmakers, funded by Creative Scotland. Research and development supported by Magnetic North Artist’s Attachment, funded by the Jerwood Charitable Foundation and Creative Scotland. Performance lecture recording commissioned by BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art. Additional support from Hope Scott Trust, The Work Room, University of Arizona Poetry Center, Trees for Life, Bothy Project, University of Glasgow, Glasgow School of Art, and CCA: Centre for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow.
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