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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) Watch photos from the performance Watch press pics |
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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. Watch photos Watch video trailer of OUT OF HAND, 03'33 (Quicktime) |
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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. Watch photos Watch video trailer of SOLO FOR YANNIS, 03'41 (Quicktime) |
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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. Watch photos Watch video trailer of Im Mobilie, 02'28 (Quicktime) |
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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. Watch photos Watch video of Macrophone & Interface trailers, 02'28 (Quicktime)  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? Watch photos Watch video of Macrophone & Interface trailers, 02'28 (Quicktime) 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. Watch photos Watch video trailer of "Because", 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. Watch 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. Watch video trailer, 03'27 (Quicktime) Watch 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. Watch 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. Watch video trailer, 02'42 (Quicktime) Watch 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. Watch video trailer, 03'18 (Quicktime) Watch photos Read reviews in English Kritiken auf Deutsch lesen Lue 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. Watch video trailer, 02'18 (Quicktime) Watch photos Read reviews in English Kritiken auf Deutsch lesen 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. 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. Watch 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. Watch video trailer, 03'30 (Quicktime) Watch photos Read 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. Watch photos Read 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. Watch photos Read 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. Watch 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. Watch video trailer, 01'01 (Quicktime) Watch photos |
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