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ON THIS PAGE YOU WILL FIND ALL THE DANCE PIECES, PHYSICAL THEATRE, MULTIMEDIA AND OPERA PRODUCTIONS WITH LINKS TO PICTURES, VIDEOS, PRESS AND PDF FILES BETWEEN THE YEARS 2001-2010. CLICK HERE TO SEE THE PRODUCTIONS FROM 1991-2000 |
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"NOTHING TO DECLARE" World premiere: 05.02.2011 Finnish Natonal Opera, Alminsali Further performances 24.3.2011, Sophiensaele - Berlin Composition: Perttu Haapanen Libretto: Perttu Haapanen / Tomi Paasonen Direction: Tomi Paasonen Lighting/Stage: Max Wikström Costumes: Tomi Paasonen / Minna Kiiskinen Bariton: Nicholas Isherwood Plus Ensemble: Mikko Luoma, accordion Christoffer Sundqvist, clarinet Erkki Lähesmaa, violoncello -Amnesiac Obsessive Compulsion -Lullapile -Typewriter Musical -Corporate Incorporeal -Recession De-Cadenza -Office Exercise Trauma -Order Order A stiflingly hollow air of absent-mindedness hovers over a vacated office space, in which nervous tension lingers. the memory of office partitions separate the abandoned players from one another. The characters observe compulsory timed breaks and other futile office rituals with obsessive precision. Verbal avalanches block the emergency exits as false illusions shatter between the lines. Meanwhile, the misleading labyrinths of the personal self-image and the temporariness and futility of all things squirm in the corners. Reality consists solely of details, because allowing for scale would threaten to topple the entire house of cards. A lonely Christmas party in mid-February spark idealistic plans and jubilant escapes, as all the absurdity sprinkles the vacuum-packed traumas with a fine layer of dust, softening sweetly. Performance photos |
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"(theLID" World premiere: 10.-12.12. 2010 Mousonturm - Frankfurt Further performances 17.-19.12. 2010 HAU3 - Berlin Choreography & dance: Ayman Harper Dance: Jermaine Spivey Live music: Matmos Stage/Costumes: Tomi Paasonen Sound engineer: Sebastian Rietz Lighting deign: Tanja Rühl Production manager: Albrecht Ziepert "(theLID" is a hybrid in which movement and sound composition condition trigger each other. The idea came from the Berlin-based choreographer and dancer Ayman Harper. He invited the dancer Jermaine Spivey, dancer of Kidd Pivot Frankfurt RM, the multi-artist Tomi Paasonen and the cult electronic duo Matmos from California/Baltimore - Drew Daniel and MC Schmidt. The two are known for their experiments with everyday objects, out of which they generate surprising, emotionally charged soundscapes. With materials and costumes provided by Tomi Paasonen, the two dancers generate delicious acoustic textures that Matmos composes into sound structures and rhythms, which in turn the performers respond to. (theLID is not a final product. It is the beginning of a rapprochement towards a new concept of motion, which is focused on the creation of sound compositions through the body. This is the first part of a study that Ayman Harper will focus on within the next years. A production by Ayman Harper in Co-production with The Forsythe Company and Künstlerhaus Mousonturm. With kind support of Hebbel am Ufer and Diverse Works, an Artist in Residence-Programme of Tanzlabor_21 / A project by Tanzplan Deutschland and the Nationale Performance Netz (NPN). The co-production funding of NPN in enabled by Kulturstiftung des Bundes. Performance photos |
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"TRAUMFÄDEN - DREAM THREADS" Premiere: 28.-30.10.2010 Theatre Rambazamba, Kulturbrauerei, House 7, Berlin Choreography, Direction and Video Concept: Tomi Paasonen Sound design: Tiago da Cruz Stage: Krisho Nagel A new piece for the Berlin-based developmentally disabled theatre group RAMBAZAMBA!. This dance-theatre piece with live video installation is based on the dream worlds of the performers, creating imagery, dramaturgy and situations that emerge from the performers' own tails, their subconscious wishes and nightmares. Performance photos |
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"NO TIME FOR REVOLUTION" Premiere: 16.03.2010 Einzelkämpfer Monologfestival Theaterdiscounter Berlin 45 min. With Heiko Senst Directed and Staged by Tomi Paasonen Text: Oscar Wilde, Heiko Senst, Tomi Paasonen Costume: Anna-Lisa Paasonen Tomi Paasonen and Heiko Senst knit like Wilde on unknown fabrics, end up in knots over old ideas and are looking for a way out of their own tangles. "No Time for Revolution" is based on Oscar Wilde's essay "The soul of man under Socialism", written in 1891. We'll ensnarl our audience in nostalgic future visions, embed them in cosy rebellion through uncoordinated cooperation and anti-radical individualism. How much time is left for revolution? Dress rehearsal photos |
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"BUCH ASCHE." Premiere: June 06th 2010 Theater Bonn/Bonn State Opera House 90 min. Music: Klaus Lang Space, Lighting and Costumes: Claudia Doderer Libretto: Händl Klaus Choreography: Tomi Paasonen Video: Axel Largo Choir Director: Sibylle Wagner Dramaturgy: Ulrike Schumann, Ilka Seifert, Thomas Witzmann Jun: Angelika Luz Xi: Assaf Levitin Emperor Liu-Pi: Terry Wey Choir of THEATER BONN Beethoven Orchestra Bonn This experimental contemporary opera is an abstraction of an old chinese fairy-tale, in which Jun, a poor rice farmer dreams of climbing up a tree to throw ash on the emperor - for which she would be sentenced to death. One day, she indeed follows through with this lunatic notion. The ash transforms into cherry blossoms in mid winter, which delights the emperor and he rewards her with a dress made out of silk. Acoustically and visually the production transforms the architecture of Bonn Opera House by extending the stage all the way to the 1st balcony. The orchestra and singers are dispersed into the entire space, making them into a moving bodies of sound, choreographed into formal architectural structures and calligraphic languages for a purely sonic spacial experience. A co-production by Fonds Experimentelles Musiktheater, NRW KULTURsekretariat, Kulturstiftung NRW, THEATER BONN and the kind support of Ernst von Siemens Musikstiftung. Performance photos |
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"WINTERREISE - sind wir selber Götter" Premiere: September 24th 2009 Theater Rambazamba, Kulturbrauerei, Berlin 120 minutes A music-theatre production based on Franz Schubert's Winterreise Liederzyklus, in collaboration with Gisela Höhne and Theatre Rambazamba with mentally challenged performers. This journey in 24 tableaus captures the essence of these morbidly beautiful songs, full of bitter rejection, cold loneliness and passionate persistence. Video trailer, 04'13 (Quicktime) Performance photos |
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"MONOGRAM - a signature piece" Premiere: March 13th 2009 International Solo Dance Festival at Rotebühlplatz, Stuttgart 10 minutes This award winning solo takes the dancers' own name, handwriting and signature as a premise to develop a choreography that is an extension of each particular dancer's movement identity. Our signature is a minimal choreography we repeat daily to prove our identity, as it is regarded as singularly individual and authentic. Through transcribing these patterns choreographically, we play with the paradox of solidifying our identity through movement, which by definition constitutes flux, change, continuum and fluidity. Press photos Performance photos  MONOGRAM Tour/Tech/Promo ENGLISH.pdf |
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"WOW ¥€$" Premiere: November 27th 2008 Kunsthaus Tacheles, Goldener Saal, Berlin 80 minutes This work-in-progress experiment plays with the concept of the stage as a space where perceptions of both performer and spectator meet. Do expectations and learned mental constructs disable us to "really" see? Is seeing a subjective act of a preconditioned mind, and if so, is a rehearsed performer blind to the moment and a slave to his task of fulfilling the expectations? If seeing is believing, is the state of listening more open, allowing us to "truly" experience? We aim to both rehearse and to listen, turning elusive expectations representations and miscommunications into ever-shifting correlations of status, mirroring and critique. If the "real" world is built on a common agreement that money has the value of how much we collectively trust its value to be, and if trust is the acceptance of a truth without evidence, how real is that world? Is wealth a tragic guilt trap or a door? Is money mass psychology, a slippery cloud used as a tool for everyday slavery, an abstract construct to control the masses, an illusion to manipulate freedom into organized societies, or can experience be a currency of its own? Video trailer, 03'56 (Quicktime) Performance photos WOW ¥€$ Tour/Tech/Promo ENGLISH.pdf |
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"HYBRID DISLOCATION" Premiere: September 18th 2008 Kunsthaus Tacheles, Goldener Saal, Berlin 90 minutes When we mix all the colours together, we either get motley or beige. When we cross a horse with a donkey, we create a mule. Through the method of cross-pollination, we want to create hybrid concoctions out of different cultures, geological and genetic biographies, urban and natural landscapes. What happens when one mixes folklore with contemporary dance methods? What "misfits" and "intelligent designs" ensue if african dance is cross pollinated with mazurka or polonaise, or tango with voodoo, calypso and Caribbean dance traditions? What are the effects on cultural identities on a globalized world population, which is increasingly on the move and influenced by one another? Four queer dancers from different parts of the world bring their folkloric backgrounds into the mix: Challenge Gumbodete - Harare (Zimbabwe), Justin Kennedy - St. Croix (Virgin Islands), Simo Kellokumpu from Kemijärvi (Lappland) and Marcin Baczyk - Siedlce (Poland) Video trailer, 03'14 (Quicktime) Performance photos Press photos Hybrid Dislocation Tour/Tech/Promo ENGLISH.pdf |
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"OUT OF HAND" Premiere: February 14th 2008 Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Main Stage San Francisco 40 minutes This piece is inspired by two locations in the home cities of Tomi Paasonen: Berlin and San Francisco. The first one is Berlin's highest mountain Teufelsberg (Devil's Mountain) which infact is a huge pile of WW2 debris. On top of it USA built a spying compound during the cold war, in order to "listen" to East Germany. After the collapse of the Berlin wall, the compound was closed, abandoned and wandalized, becoming a ruinous canvas for graffiti artists. Audio recordings made at this site are used to create the sound score for the piece. Against this backdrop, we are creating choreographic ideas by studying the movement language of people on the Market/7th street area and Civic Center of San Francisco. By placing these realities, contrasts, struggles, greeds and have-nots, survivals, corporate etiquette, homelessness and spiritual shortcuts of this urban jungle, into the echoes of a a ruin of American foreign policy, they become ghosts in a dream, reflecting the choreographer's perception as he bridges the gap between his two home towns. Video trailer, 03'33 (Quicktime) Performance photos |
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"SOLO FOR YANNIS" Premiere: February 14th 2008 Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Main Stage San Francisco 12 minutes Following questions by Alonzo King initiated the process of this piece that was developed in dialogue with Alonzo King: What have you felt the most alive and what did that feel like? What do you want to accomplish before you die? When the body dies, what happens? Big questions for a small solo. Tomi Paasonen's and Yannis Adoniou's dialogue with Alonzo King embarked them to reflect on the essence of pure presence. By breaking down habbits of learnt movement patterns, abandoning the security of technique and ridding the performing body of affectations of society, their starting point was an attempt to surrender the body to a state of listening. Through tools of sensory deprivation, the hightened state of awareness allowes the body to reveal unaffected shapes, guided by natural movement dynamics, to explore molecular choreography. Video trailer, 03'41 (Quicktime) Performance photos |
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"IM MOBILIE" Premiere: December 6th 2007 Dock11, Berlin 50 minutes IM MOBILIE is a Berlin-based multimedia dance piece that bundles a collage of movements, ideas and images developed at the homes of the dancers. The concepts of personal and public space are gradually getting blurred, in this stage production that takes the physical movement language of the private sphere and translates the forms into the context of public representative space of the stage, as it investigates how individual concepts of home is related to personal history and self-realization. Video trailer, 02'28 (Quicktime) Performance photos |
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"INTERFACE" Premiere: July 12th 2007 Dock11, Berlin 45 minutes interface |ˌɪntəfeɪs| noun -1 a point where two systems, subjects, organizations, etc., meet and interact : the interface between accountancy and the law. • chiefly Physics a surface forming a common boundary between two portions of matter or space, e.g., between two immiscible liquids : the surface tension of a liquid at its air/liquid interface. -2 Computing a device or program enabling a user to communicate with a computer. • a device or program for connecting two items of hardware or software so that they can be operated jointly or communicate with each other. verb [ intrans. ] ( interface with) 1 interact with (another system, person, organization, etc.) : his goal is to get people interfacing with each other. 2 Computing connect with (another computer or piece of equipment) by an interface. Video trailers of Macrophone & Interface , 02'28 (Quicktime) Performance photos Macrophone & Interface Tour/Tech/Promo ENGLISH.pdf |
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"MACROPHONE" Premiere: April 20th 2007 Logen, Bergen International Festival, Norway 45 minutes What is the difference between simply being and acting? What defines the difference between winning and losing? What happens if you inject the media into the body? What is rehearsed and what is spontaneous? What is the secret to your success? What would please everyone? What is your point of view? What is your name? Video tailers of Macrophone & Interface, 02'28 (Quicktime) Performance photos Macrophone & Interface Tour/Tech/Promo ENGLISH.pdf |
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"BECAUSE" Premiere: July 5th 2007 Dock11, Berlin 40 minutes The rules for this group improvisation was emailed to the dancers from Berlin to San Francisco who interpreted the words into movements before flying to Berlin to perform it. The rules are based on translations and interpretations of information, group psychology and swarm behavior. The piece is related to the piece "ETC..." from 2005 but focuses in on the body, using only sound that the physicality creates and has no parallel layers of audio and visual art. Performance photos Video trailer, 03'49 (Quicktime) |
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"THE CAT'S CRADLE" - Interactive Installation August 28th - September 3rd, 2006 Black Rock Desert, Burning Man Festival, Nevada, USA Produced with and for Burning Man Festival, this project is a large climbable instrument and interactive sculpture, in the form of two giant hands and a globe, towering from the dried out salt lake of the Nevada Black Rock Desert. In-between the three objects, participants were invited to weave a web out of white yarn and rope. A minimal ambient sound-scape was triggered by touching the sculpture and by pulling and moving the ropes and threads, thus making each movement inside the ever denser growing maze resonate into a constant developing composition shaped by the collective. Photo diary |
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"BEST BEFORE: - phase one" Work-in-progress presentations: July 25th-30th 2006 Dock11, Berlin 75 minutes “Best Before:” A performance about beauty, artificiality and malleability of bodies, indulging in a dance of metamorphosis, masquerade and mimesis. The phantasm of eternal youth and the fetishization of the mediated body have distorted our perception of physical reality into a bodiless image, which can be shaped and moulded into perfection in order to be consumed. In this abyss between appearance and corporeal authenticity, the struggle to fulfil norms of beauty is a struggle to manipulate perceptions, to attain the glances onto our surface, the skin. Our organ of façade has become the representative brand of our identity, seen both as an object and medium for alterations, disguise, makeovers and imitations of fashionable icons and idols. But the constant interventions and manipulations it is faced with, already have the date of expiration carved into them. Video trailer, 03'27 (Quicktime) Performance photos Recension in English Interview und Rezension auf Deutsch Tour/Tech/Promo ENGLISH.pdf Tour/Tech/Promo DEUTSCH.pdf |
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"ETC..." Premiere: September 22nd 2005 ODC Theater, San Francisco 35 minutes A choreographic group improvisation with 5 dancers, live camera and projectors based on the principles of chain reactions, using the means of repetition, copying, looping, feed-back, amplification, alteration, mutation, distortion and translation of information from one medium to another. Video trailer, 03'26 (Quicktime) Read review in English |
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"ÜBERHAUPTSÄCHLICH -ein Chorstück für einen Mann" "D.I.D. - a choir piece for one man" Premiere: February 17th 2005 Dock11, Berlin 60 minutes A choreographic and audio-visual study on schizophrenia and Dissociate Identity Disorder (D.I.D.)with one performer, a live generated electronic sound-scape in a layered video installation. The work is embedded in anagrams, splitting, fragmentation, contradiction and multiplication, until the person is diluted transparent, trapped in his own representational theatre set. Video trailer, 02'42 (Quicktime) Performance photos Tour/Tech/Promo.pdf |
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"MeMoRe - auf der Suche nach dem roten Faden" "MeMoRe - in search for the red thread" Premiere: September 16th 2004 Old Weavery, Berlin 75 minutes An autobiographical audio-visual physical theatre collage with a washing machine and six performers interacting with their past, creating a neurological network, that follows the dramaturgy of our associative thinking process, interweaving personal with collective history, imagination, dreaming, digital memory and amnesia. Video trailer, 03'18 (Quicktime) Performance photos Reviews in English Kritiken auf Deutsch Arvosteluja Suomeksi Tour/Tech/Promo.pdf |
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"VORSTELLUNG - lassen Sie sich nicht überraschen" "PRESENTATION - don't let us surprise you!” Premiere: February 26th 2004 Dock 11, Berlin 70 minutes A full evening with three parallels for two dancers, a cameraman, a projectionist and a sound / light installation about repetition and difference, recollection and becoming, the relationship to self in conjunction to self-projection onto the other. Video trailer, 02'18 (Quicktime) Performance photos Reviews in English Kritiken auf Deutsch Tour/Tech/Promo.pdf |
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"UMWEG" - "DE TOUR" Premiere: April 15th 2004 Dock11, Berlin 10 minutes This 10 minute short term memory game premiered in the WEE-Dance Company’s production of KURZSTRECKE (short distance), an evening of short pieces by various Berlin-based choreographers. Performance photos Read review / Kritik lesen |
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"WAISEN" - "ORPHANS" Premiere: July 17th 2004 Groß Leuthen Castle, Brandenburg 20 minutes A piece for a video periscope installation. 2 dancers filmed from above moving on a projected floor, in turn projected onto the wall of the installation, creating an illusion of distorted depth, perspective and weightlessness. Video trailer, 01'59 (Quicktime) |
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“LA CHUTE DE LA MAISON USHER” "THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER" Premiere December 7th 2002 Kiasma Theatre, Helsinki, Finland 80 minutes The opera 'La Chute de la Maison Usher' is based on the famous gothic horror short-story by Edgar Allan Poe. The idea to make a multimedia stage production was inspired out of the discovery of the 28 minutes of unfinished opera fragments that C. Debussy had composed. This material was used as a starting point for a new stage piece that combines old and new music, opera, physical theatre and multimedia. Video trailer, 03'30 (Quicktime) Performance photos Reviews in English |
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"W" Premiere July 11th 2002 Willits Performing Arts Center, Mendocino, USA 20 minutes Your perception of me is a projection of yourself on me as I see myself in you seeing yourself in the ocean of my eye, so who's looking at whom here and what do you see when we look, or is it just me being you double me? A play with you and me, four eyes, two lenses, all of you and everything in between. Performance photos Reviews in English |
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"SUPER VISION" Premiere June 21st 2002 Cowell Theatre, San Francisco, USA 40 minutes In "SUPER VISION" skinned inside-out identity barriers reject. Vulgar, corporate, hypocritical nudity and desperate pursuits of success drive us to aggressive masturbatory self-promotion to cover up fragile weak self-reflective search for purpose. As it all crumbles and bodies burst as water bags around us, the leftovers are sent out on a slippery slope to survive and find a new way to cross the crater. Performance photos Review in English |
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"IKARUS - ABFLUG TEGEL" ICARUS _ DEPARTURE TEGEL (Icarus - Departure Tegel) Premiere February 8th 2002 Tegel Prison in Berlin 90 minutes A collaborative project with theatre directors Winfried Tobias and Karen Witthuhn of Aufbruch Prison Theatre Ensemble and the prison inmates at Germany's largest male prison in Tegel, Berlin. Strange passengers, stuck in a departure hall of an airport where they've been waiting for a very long time. Tales of escaping, fleeing, flying, crashing and dream destinations until one day an odd bird has an uplifting idea. Performance photos |
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"PARA NEU" Premiere January 5th 2002 Sophiensæle, Berlin 40 minutes These creatures are attracted to light and gradually, layer by layer loose their protective shields as their fight for attention grows increasingly aggressive. Like dysfunctional toys they singe in each other's reflective chilling cold light and too late wake up in post innocence hangover to the thunder of a much bigger beam. Video trailer, 01'01 (Quicktime) Performance photos |
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