Kuopio Dance Festival.

Nestled in a spectacular landscape of evergreens and crystal-clear lakes about 300 miles northeast of Helsinki, the Kuopio Dance Festival celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary this year. The festival has grown from a local event featuring both music and dance to the largest annual dance festival in Scandinavia.

For its silver anniversary, artistic director Jukka O. Miettinen commissioned two works from young Finnish choreographers Tero Saarinen and Alpo Aaltokoski. Saarinen's Three Pieces in Old Style, danced by him and Kenneth Kvarnstrom, was thematically interesting but felt incomplete. Yet the other piece, Aaltokoski's I Am My Own Body, lost its power because it was too long and vague. The most interesting part of the latter work was its score by Finnish composer Olli Koskelin.

More satisfying than either of these was another premiere, One Way Only, choreographed by Arja Raatikainen to Schnittke's Gogol Suite. It was performed by Katri Soini, the winner of the Finland Festival's 1994 Young Artist of the Year Award. The best piece offered by a Finnish artist this summer, One Way Only had a powerful but soft vocabulary of movements that suited its performer like her own skin. Seen in the context of the other performances by visiting artists, Finnish contemporary dance can be interesting and varied; the dancers know their profession.

The history of dance in this country was evoked in the festival's gala opening performance, as the Finnish National Ballet performed excerpts from George Ge's 1992 arrangement of Swan Lake. Ulrika Hallberg, Aku Ahjolinna, and Kimmo Sandell wore appropriate period costumes and soberly danced with the mannerisms of the time, all of which caused audience members to laugh until tears were running down their cheeks. Paris Opera Ballet etoiles Elisabeth Platel and Nicolas Le Riche, as well as Angela Reinhardt and Gregor Seyffert from the Berlin Comic Opera, skillfully danced additional pas de deux. Both men jumped brilliantly--especially Le Riche, who seemed to pause at the top of his jump as Nijinsky is said to have done.

Another highlight of the festival was the impressive performance by Israel's Batsheva Dance Company in artistic director Ohad Naharin's epic Mabul ("The Flood," 1992). Naharin combines different types of music, other kinds of sound (including a spoken text), and movement languages in a daring and absurd way which somehow all comes together with stunning effect.

During the course of the festival's eight days the audience had the opportunity to enjoy the Latvian National Ballet performing Raymonda, Japanese kabuki theater, Chinese ghost operas, fiery Argentine tangos, the incomparable British clown Nola Rae in her stunning skit The Conductor, charmingly feminine dances by Suraya Hilal (who specializes in the dance traditions of the Middle East), and, to top everything, the premiere of The Insect, a butoh performance by Anzu Furukawa. The first part, a touching study of humankind danced by Furukawa herself, was one of the most affecting experiences of the entire festival.