Riikka Lakea

Riikka Lakea (former Laurilehto) has been educated as a dance artist in Copenhagen (The Danish National School of Performing Arts) and Helsinki (Uniarts Helsinki’s Theater Academy). At the core of her artistic practice are creating performer- and site-specific pieces, using improvisation as a work and performance tool and continuously researching for more sustainable and equal working structures. In her work the roles of performer, choreographer, film maker, facilitator and producer intertwine and are in constant dialogue. Lakea’s work is guided by an ecological, intersectional, and feminist worldview, that perceives different agents and phenomena as deeply relational and interconnected.

Lakea’s artistic work builds on collective, dialogical, and low-hierarchical group work. At the moment, her choreographic work focuses on developing the improvisation practice dancing music in collaboration with dance artist Vincent Jonsson in an ongoing research project A cCompany Dancing. Lakea’s earlier choreographic works include e.g. the process-oriented musical short film With a little help from my friends (2017), the wandering site-sensitive dance piece BUNDLE (2017) and the dance performance LET’S NOT PRETEND TO BE ALONE HERE (2016). Her work has been performed around Northern Europe at festivals like Works at Work in Denmark, NEUNOW in Amsterdam and UrbanApa in Helsinki. Lakea’s latest collaborations, where she has been working as a performer and collaborator, include the practice-based sound and dance piece olento /olio /otus /eläin /eläjä (2019), audio walk and pop album Urban Anatomies Teleport (2019) and the trek performance Of being in the dark (2019).

Lakea has performed in others’ work in Denmark at The Danish National School of Performing Arts, The Royal Danish Theatre and Aaben Dans -dance theatre and in Finland at Uniarts Helsinki’s Theatre Academy and in various works by independent choreographers. She has performed in pieces by Lea Moro, Liz Kinoshita, Rebecca Hilton, Thomas Eisenhardt, Sonya Lindfors and Valtteri Raekallio, among others.

In addition to her artistic work, Lakea works as a producer for other performing artists. She works as the producer of Helsinki-based theatre Circus Maximus and as a production coordinator and assistant for choreographers Sonya Lindfors and Valtteri Raekallio.