photos: Heli Sorjonen
Race Horse Company are Petri, Kalle and Rauli, three Finnish contemporary circus performers who bring backgrounds in cage fighting, hip-hop and garden trampoline to the stage for their aggressively physical acts. Wheel caught up with them shortly before they appeared on Channel 4’s new 5 O’Clock programme with... Peter Andre... to ask about their show Petit Mal and late nights and long drives on tour.
By John Ellingsworth
What are your backgrounds?
Rauli – Our parents put my sister and me through gymnastics when we were small, and then in Turku there was a circus school. My sister was the first one to go into that and then I followed.
Kalle – I’m a lot from hip-hop culture. I did graffiti and music and rap stuff before; it’s still my life, but I have to do something for work. This was so near to that – I could express myself and do it as work.
Petri – I did kickboxing for four years and one year of cage fighting.
Cage fighting?
P – Yeah. It was the first course in Finland... I didn’t ever compete. Some of the techniques are used in Petit Mal, but it’s playful. I don't experience it as being wild. It’s like people have really wrong ideas about martial arts. You don’t hurt your friends.
Petit Mal is set in a dark garage junkyard with chains and planks of wood and tyres. Where does this aesthetic come from and what are your influences?
P – For me it’s environment. What I see around; really simple things. I like it when I see something unexpected on a normal scene – somebody’s acting funny or acting in a way that they shouldn’t.
I was travelling in Nepal and from a bus window I saw a hole in the ground, and there was this small boy in the hole looking at the scene around him through 3D glasses. I wanted that to be the beginning of Petit Mal, that everything is destroyed and you’re looking at the view with 3D glasses. The whole thing started to build up from that.
Your approach is very casual, very rough, a little destructive...
K – In circus you have to succeed in everything, and if you fall down or crash then it’s doing something different than what people normally do. I like crashing. In breaking, if you crash you lose. Now I can crash and still win.
R – On trampoline I got interested in doing it wrong, just breaking all the moves. I’d been practising all the hard techniques. But before that I did trampoline with my friends and had a teacher that said if you could do the trick then there was no need to clean it up, just move on to the next one.
I wanted to continue that work. You’re free in the air. In trampoline you have one point where you have to tense your body – the take-off, after that you can relax. Every time I’m in the air I’m really relaxed.
You guys have toured a lot with your outdoor show. What’s been your best, or worst, experience on the road?
P – Last summer we did three shows inside 17 hours and two different countries – first in Vilnius, then in Riga, then back to Vilnius. The first show was at 6. At 7 we were on the road; I was eating and driving at the same time. It was actually the best performance of that show that we’ve done, in Riga, at night.
What’s next?
P - Baja 1000. It’s a desert competition where you drive 1000 miles. I would be really happy to do that on a motorbike. 
Race Horse Company are touring Belgium, Denmark and France later this year.
John Ellingsworth has written about Petit Mal for Sideshow magazine.
www.sideshow-circusmagazine.com
Interview © 2010 Wheel Me Out. No part can be used for any purpose without prior consent. Please contact editorial@wheelmeout.com
