Aerowaves 2014: Anna Maria Hakkinen & Jarkko Partanen (Finland), Dig My Jockey

Pony-porny, and the Tom, Dick and Harry of Finland. Flash review from Aerowaves 2014 Spring Forward festival.


The fetishistic homoerotic art of Tom of Finland, soon to appear on Finnish stamps, seems to have stamped Finnish choreographers Anna Maria Hakkinen and Jarkko Partanen too. In Dig My Jockey, four performers sport tight jeans, boots and gloves. Donning bridles and wielding whips, they play horsey: one performer bends over, another mounts them. The riders hump their charges. The ridden pant and thrash. The subtext of sexualised domination/submission is so blatant you might as well call it the text.

Partly it’s just kink – pony-porny, if you like – but the intersection of power with flesh is also profoundly disturbing. And the three men – I thought of them as the Tom, Dick and Harry of Finland – are vanilla compared with the figure of Hakkinen, heavily pregnant, her baby bump bouncing with each aggressive pump and thrust.