20 STORIES OF CIRCOSTRADA - CELEBRATING THE 20TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE NETWORK: Sauna Island

In 2010, the biannual general Circostrada meeting was in Helsinki for the opening of Cirko Center, a new facility that was part of a larger redevelopment of the former gasworks and power station in Suvilahti district. Amidst a programme of performances in the newly opened theatre, meetings with Nordic artists, and visits to other local players around Helsinki, there was one extra item on the agenda, for the final evening, that drew everyone’s attention: a trip to Uunisaari, aka ‘sauna island’. The beauty of Circostrada is that its members come from many different countries, and with them, they bring different experiences, expectations, habits and temperaments. As we boarded the ferry on the southern tip of the Helsinki mainland, it was clear that some were more familiar with saunas than others. Was I supposed to bring something? Is it mixed? Am I going to see my colleagues naked? How does it work? As we sailed over, it was late in the evening but still very light, as it was May in Helsinki. That time of year there is a magical feeling in the air: you expect the sunset, but it doesn’t come, and the days draw out. The island when we reached it was a small one. There was a long building, where a buffet was laid out for us, a small beach, and two little wooden huts that housed the men’s and women’s saunas. Those who wanted to could go for a swim in the Baltic Sea (most did not). I’m used to saunas having quite strict rules about how you use them, but on Uunisaari it was more like going to a bar in a sauna. Inside the huts themselves, it was dark, rather small, with wooden benches and a tiny window letting in a little light. The men’s sauna had Tomi Purovaara, the director of Cirko, as their sauna host and expert, and for us it was Lotta Vaulo from CircusInfo Finland. She told us that in Finland a lot of the apartment blocks have a sauna on the roof. When the residents need to discuss the building maintenance or make collective decisions, or just discuss things, they do it in the sauna — the same way you’d meet at a pub or a terrace in another country. So what did we talk about, in our little sauna? Well, many things, in French, English, Dutch and Finnish — but different to what we normally would. We were in a kind of bubble, where the usual work relations didn’t apply. We took those off, you could say, and left them outside. What I remember now is that we had a kind of sauna matriarchy — the younger girls and the older French women. We talked a long time, sharing stories late into the night. When we got too hot, we’d go out to rinse off and then come back inside because we liked so much just being there together in this little cocoon. For a long time after that, for years in fact, whenever we met two or more of us met we could just say coucou and that was enough — everyone would start to laugh because we’d had this experience together. It created the chemistry — the extra layer of a relationship you have with a person.