Tomi Paasonen was born 1970 in Helsinki. His whole childhood he danced, sung and painted, until dance took over the focus of his creative life by the age of 11. After having represented Finland at the Eurovision Competition for Young Dancers at the age of 17, he was invited to the Hamburg Balletschool. Having completed his dance education there, he danced as a soloist with Hamburg Ballet, Lines Ballet San Francisco and The Joffrey Ballet.

He continually created pieces of his own throughout his dancing career in Hamburg, San Francisco and Chicago. In 1998 he co-founded KUNST-STOFF, a dance / media and art production company in San Francisco. This first company of his combined the interdisciplinary broad-mindedness from his childhood and the end-of-the-millennium zeitgeist, aiming to bring together and cross-pollinate different art-forms, performing arts- and dance techniques.

 
After creating 15 pieces in 3,5 years he moved back to Europe in 2000, expanding his stage-, film and photo works to involve documentary layers, working with peripheral societies in award winning productions, such as “STATE OF BEING” with disabled and professional dancers and "ICARUS- DEPARTURE TEGEL", a co-production with Germany's largest male prison. The photo exhibition “GALA DRESS”, with a 70-year-old disabled artist Tuuli Helkky Helle was followed by his first opera direction, based on unfinished fragments by Claude Debussy and Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “The Fall of the House of Usher” in Kiasma, Helsinki.

After this binge exploring different medias and producing staged documentaries, he moved to Berlin, launching PAA (Public Artistic Affairs). Since then he has been both developing theme-specific choreographic structural improvisation techniques and continued to deepen his use of justifiable dramaturgic relationships between live video installations and the performer. His pieces also integrate live composed electronic music and he is obsessed with having all the elements in constant communication, triggered by each other. The Berlin-based identity trilogy consisting of “PRESENTATION – don’t let us surprise you!”, “MeMore – searching for the red thread” and “D.I.D. – a choir piece for one man” explore self image and relationship to the self, at first through the doctrine of repetition and difference and self projection, then through the lens of memory and the relationship to the past, and at last through multiple personality syndrome, torn inner dialogues, schizophrenia and extreme states.
 
He is currently both interested in pushing his stage-art structures and media work practices towards interactive works, and to express what the physical body of the 21st century has to say.

Tomi has been awarded with the critic's awards as as "Newcomer of the Year 1998" in San Francisco by Allan Ulrich, "Theatre Event of the Year 2000" in Finland for his piece Olotila - State of Being and "Pro Dance Award" in Finland for innovations in the field of dance. His company KUNST-STOFF has been awarded with the Bay Guardian Goldie Award - Company of the Year in San Francisco and his piece "W" was nominated for the Isadora Duncan Award for best piece of 2004 in San Francisco. Critics Choice "Collaboration of the Year 2007" by Arnd Wesemann / Ballett/Tanz for the piece "Interface". His piece "Monogram" won 2nd price at the International Solo Dance Festival in Stuttgart in 2009. His work has been seen in Helsinki, Kuopio, Vaasa, Pyhäjärvi, Forssa, Stockholm, Malmö, Oslo, Bergen, Copenhagen, Berlin, Hamburg, Stuttgart, Mainz, Paris, London, Athens, Cyprus, Israel, Belgrade, New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Sao Paulo and now in Hong Kong.
 

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