Step into the world of Deer Dancer, into the wilderness. Observe five deer-men encounter one another during the rut – the Monarch, Warrior, Young Buck, Fool and Old Sage. Listen to their haunting display calls. Discover how they jump, trot, pronk and stot within their pre-hunt ritual. Watch high-ranking males battle for supremacy, while others defend themselves as best they can.

Step into the world of Deer Dancer. See the theatre; hear the drum beat. Observe a quintet of female-identifying performers take it in turns to play five hybrid characters. In the space between wild-deer-ness and performed male-ness, see them gesture, lip-sync, dance and sing, undressing and redressing into costumes for another round of tragicomedy.

Hanna Tuulikki's Deer Dancer is a complex cross-artform study into our multifaceted relationship with deer. Beginning with mimesis, specifically representations within dance, the work examines how the imitation of deer behaviour constructs ideas of ‘wilderness’ as the site for the cultivation of heroic hetero-masculinities and how hunting mythologies shape and impact real, often vulnerable 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.

For Take Me Somewhere 2021, Tuulikki will re-work her solo performance for moving-image from 2019 into a live ensemble performance.

Lead Artist: Hanna Tuulikki
Performer-Devisers: Nic Green, Jo Hellier, Simone Kenyon, Fabiola Santana & Hanna Tuulikki.
Character Development & Choreography by Will Dickie, Peter McMaster & Hanna Tuulikki
Dramaturg: Peter McMaster
Movement Director: Will Dickie
Composer: Hanna Tuulikki
Sound Designer & Sound Operator: Kim Moore
Sound Engineer: Kenny MacLeod
Costume Fabricator & Wardrobe Manager: Lydia Honeybone
Producer: Siân Baxter
Production Manager: Nick Millar
Director of Photography: Andrew Begg
Access Editor: Carrie Skinner

Hanna Tuulikki is a critically acclaimed artist-composer-performer working across the visual arts, music and performance. Blending vocal composition, choreography, costume and drawing, her work investigates how bodies communicate beyond and before words, often drawing on traditional practices of mimesis of the more-than-human to offer alternative approaches to making kin. Recent projects engage with what it means to live on a damaged planet, proposing contemporary queer ritual as a way to process the trauma of ecological awareness. Based in Glasgow, she was Magnetic North Theatre's first Artist Attachment supported by Jerwood (2017-19), and shortlisted for the Max Mara Art Prize (2020).

Deer Dancer (2021) is supported by Creative Scotland National Lottery fund, Magnetic North, Take Me Somewhere and Tramway.

The audiovisual installation version of Deer Dancer (2019) was commissioned by Edinburgh Printmakers, funded by Creative Scotland. Research and development supported by Magnetic North's Artist Attachment, funded by Jerwood Foundation and Creative Scotland. Additional support from Hope Scott Trust, The Work Room, University of Arizona Poetry Center, Trees for Life, University of Glasgow, Glasgow School of Art, and CCA: Centre for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow.

Research developed through conversations and interviews with tradition bearers and academics, Felipe Molina (Yaqui tradition bearer/ translator), Larry Evers (American Indian Studies, The University of Arizona), Jack Brown (Abbots Bromley Horn Dance tradition bearer/ 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 2017/2018); 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, autumn 2017/2018).