Bunch of Scrumps Collective

Go Strange is a dance and drumming performance that is imagined, created and performed by Bunch of Scrumps Collective (Jacqueline Aylward, Maja Kalafatić and Jesse Ojajärvi). Go Strange explores the lived experiences of something that feels familiar and strange at the same time. It formed through practices of grounding, connecting to the sublime, belonging, accepting of the alien and producing home.  

The performance uses movement, sound and intention to produce generators that offer gateways into altered states. It meets, familiarises and recycles these states. Throughout the work there is a play with expanded representations of human identities. The use of bodies, both human and object, attempts to slip between the everyday, the absurd and the otherworldly. The collective works both to hold individual perspective, skills and identities and also to collapse them into one being. 

Makers and performers Jacqueline Aylward, Maja Kalafatić, Jesse Ojajärvi
Technical help/video Ivan Mihailović
Video editing Matej Kalafatić
Music Pre-recorded sounds used in the performance make use of the song “Kesäjärven valssi”, composed by Pentti Ojajärvi, performed by Pentti Ojajärvi and Joonas Ojajärvi. 

This work is supported by TAIKE (Arts Promotion Centre Finland), Čiča Mičino Pozorište Belgrade, Dom kulture Studentski grad Belgrade, Helsinki Central Library Oodi, The Finnish Cultural Foundation’s North Karelia Regional Fund, Kulturanova Novi Sad and Sovintola Kesälahti. 

Premiere 27.8.2023, Kesälahti, Sovintola Gallery
Pictures Ljubica Blagojević, Nevan Hercegovac

Bunch of Scrumps collective: Jacqueline Aylward (AUS), Maja Kalafatić (SI/SRB) and Jesse Ojajärvi (FIN). Bunch of Scrumps is a newly formed collective of artists making experimental dance and music performance pieces. The core members are coming from different countries and different cultural environments/landscapes. The collective works both to hold individual perspective, skills and identities and also to collapse them into one being. 
Bunch of Scrumps is a collective that started working together in 2023. As a collective they have made two works: “Go Strange” and “Expanded Drumming”. 
 
Maja Kalafatić (Slovenia/Serbia) is a dance maker and pedagogue who lives and works between Finland, Slovenia and Serbia. She is very much interested in the relation of movement and music and trying out new possible formats of collaboration and performing. She wishes to distribute dance outside of dance and theater context and share it with locality. Maja has a Masters of Dance performance (The Theatre Academy Uniarts, Helsinki), Master of Arts in Dance Dissemination from University of Music and Dance Cologne, Germany and Bachelor in Dance from Salzburg Experimental Academy of Dance. 
 
Jacqueline Aylward (Australia) is a dance artist from Naarm (Melbourne) who is currently based in Helsinki. Her artistic practice is preoccupied with dance and dancing as a space of excessive nonsense, material playfulness and fiction; for both the performer and their audiences. Her approach is interdisciplinary and intuitive. She has a Masters of Dance Performance (The Theatre Academy, Uniarts Helsinki), Bachelor of Fine Arts, Contemporary Dance (The University of Melbourne), Bachelor of Arts, History and English Literature (The University of Melbourne). 
 
Jesse Ojajärvi (Finland) is a multi-instrumentalist and dancer working on both solo and group projects, such as Mikko Sarvanne Garden and Harri Kuusijärvi Koutus. He is a Master of Music (Department of Jazz, SibA, Uniarts Helsinki), and also has a vocational qualification in dance (North Karelia College, Riveria Outokumpu).