My Work as a Dancer
Be the Ocean
Ocean. Be the Ocean is a submersion under its invisible surface, a sense of water density. A landscape, where bodies distorted by underwater sight, endless motion and decomposing matter birth new life.
Choreography: Maija Nurmio, Dance: Jonna Eiskonen, Eliisa Erävalo and Kati Korosuo, Sound design: Miikka Ahlman, Lighting design: Olivia Pohjola, Photography: Markku Uusitalo / Tampere Dance Current Contemporary Dance Festival, Olivia Pohjola, Production: Maija Nurmio, Barker Theatre and Mad House Helsinki
Premiere and performances:
5-6 February 2021, Barker Theatre, Turku
3-4 December 2022, Barker Theatre, Turku
28 May 2023, Tampere Dance Current Contemporary Dance Festival, Tampere
The Artist Is at Home
The Artist Is at Home is a banal spectacle from a narcissistic artist for a scandal yearning audience. Documentary footage and use of self as material are highlighted in its egocentricity to the point of annoyance. Our time is a stage, on which everything has already been said and done, shown and seen. What can the body of the performer still reflect?
The solo performance is based on Kati Korosuo's recurrent nightmares about tortoises. She has dreamt about them for almost 25 years. In 2012, she began to document her dreams on video. This deliciously honest video diary juxtaposes the perverted bodily experience of dreams to the daily realities of the artist, acting as a bridge between the private subconscious and the collective consciousness. In the movement-based performance the laconic video material collides with a nightmarish stage body.
Concept and performance: Kati Korosuo, Scenography and costume design: Annika Saloranta, Lighting design: Outi Vedenpää, Sound design: Miikka Ahlman, Moving image: Sanni Priha, Seamstress: Pia Lasonen, Mentor: Maija Nurmio, Photos: Erica Nyholm, Performance photos: Venla Helenius, Trailer: Timo Wright, Production: Helsinki City Theatre's Stage for Contemporary Performance, Kati Korosuo, Höyhentämö - Pluckhouse
Premiere and performances:
23-29 August 2022, Studio Pasila, Helsinki City Theatre
america
America by NOM KOLLEKTIV is a carnivalistic nonsense and at the same time the fulfillment of dreams. America is a frame of reference full of non-existent affect produced by an inexhaustible belief in one's own excellence.
Choreography: Jaakko Nieminen, Dance: Samuli Emery, Kati Korosuo and Aino Voutilainen, Sound design: Lauri Kallio and Jaakko Nieminen, Visual appearance: Jaakko Nieminen, Photography: Jaakko Nieminen, Production: Barker-theatre & NOM KOLLEKTIV
Premiere and performances:
29 October - 5 November 2020, Barker Theatre, Turku
3-4 September 2022, Valssaamo, Cable Factory, Helsinki
Oh, Forest
Oh, Forest is a response to hate speech, nature's exploitation and materialism. The work intervenes with the dominant social short-sightedness by evoking the viewer's personal experiences in nature with its physical memories and collides it with huge social-environmental questions. The performance shakes the viewers to face the fact that we are part of a civilisation that has separated itself from nature and systematically destroys it. The piece looks at good and evil without moral underlining, straight from the body.
Choreography: Maija Nurmio, Dance: Jonna Eiskonen, Kati Korosuo, Maija Nurmio, Sound design: Miikka Ahlman, Lighting design: Raisa Kilpeläinen, Costume design: Kirsi Gum, Photography: Raisa Kilpeläinen
Premiere and performances:
6-10 May 2017, Barker Theatre, Turku
24-26 May 2017, K&C Kekäläinen & Company, Helsinki
Song of the Goddess
Song of the Goddess is a visual story of womanhood, its austerity, creating-power and continuity. Women's stories remind us of the importance of polyphony and equality. Song of the Goddess is a collectively built performance of the life of a woman. It's a hymn, sung with movement, for existence, humanity and its wonders.
Concept and directing: Steina Öhman, Performance: Kati Korosuo, Kaari Martin, Satu Rekola, Kreeta Salminen and Elin Smedlund, Costume design: Steina Öhman and Annika Saloranta, Lighting design: Steina Öhman and Mirkka Saari, Sound design: Steina Öhman and Mauri Marin, Photography: Outi Törmälä, Residency: Adishakti Laboratory of Theatre Arts Research, Tamil Nadu, India
Premiere and performances:
1-11 March 2017, Kanneltalo, Helsinki
Oro y Furo
Installative performance in public spaces, where performance meets installation, material meets movement and man meets art.
Concept and production: Danger Foxtrot, Choreography: Astrid Künzler-Büchter, Costume and set design: Melanie Mock, Performance: Barbara Baer, Ursina Bösch, Alena Kundela, Kati Korosuo, Grazia Pellegrino, Jrene Baruffaldi, Photography: Regula Lustenberger
Premiere and performances:
31 March - 1 April 2017, Winterthur, Switzerland
19 May 2017, Bern, Switzerland
20 May 2017, Basel, Switzerland
Thousand intensities
The group works of Thousand intensities -series explore the production of meaning through training and through social orders of value; how the trained body and the practicing body are producing meaning and value.
The series contained three experimental pieces, and a fourth final part collecting some materials and themes together. While the concepts for the works were based on Akseli Aittomäki's long-term work, for each individual performance we worked fast, producing partly unforeseen 'results'.
The series was produced by Höyhentämö - Pluckhouse in Helsinki
Aisthesiophysics
In the first part of the series, Aisthesiophysics, we explored desire to sense and to train, and the experiential meaning of training.
Directing: Akseli Aittomäki, Choreography and performing: Kati Korosuo, Jukka Tarvainen and Akseli Aittomäki, Sound design: Paavo Malmberg, Lighting design: Ainu Palmu, Camera (projected films) Akseli Aittomäki and Ainu Palmu, Photography: Tani Simberg
Premiered 1 September 2015, at Höyhentämö in Helsinki
Territories
In Territories, the second part of the series, we explored how experience and physical training construct identities, and how these are integrated in social institution, and used for social functions.
Directing: Akseli Aittomäki, Choreography and performing: Kati Korosuo, Jaakko Nieminen, Jukka Tarvainen, Tanja Eloranta and Akseli Aittomäki, Music: Matti Strahlendorff, Lighting design: Ainu Palmu, Photography: Tani Simberg
Premiered 19 September 2015, at Höyhentämö in Helsinki
Adsorbsio
The final part of the series, Adsorbsio, attempted to review and to extend on some of the findings on the productive capabilities of the body. Starting from a desire to act and feel, we produce meanings and practices, which becomes parts of the society - and, perhaps, in some way, the society, that is those practices and meanings, produces us.
Directing: Akseli Aittomäki, Performing, choreography and texts: Tanja Eloranta, Kati Korosuo, Jaakko Nieminen, Jukka Tarvainen, Marja Skaffari and Akseli Aittomäki, Lighting design Ainu Palmu, Sound design: Joonas Pernilä, Video Akseli Aittomäki, Music: Matti Strahlendorff, Set construction: Lauri Jäntti, Documentation and cinematography: Riikka Theresa Innanen and Juha Sääski, Editing: Akseli Aittomäki, Photography: Tani Simberg
Premiered 12 January 2017, at Cable Factory in Helsinki
Personal Symphonic Moment
"Is it a discount disco or a pathos-laden fireworks display in homage to Shostakovich?", the Finnish Music Quarterly asked in its enthusiastic review of Elina Pirinen's award-winning trio. The Finnish choreographer conducts some kind of "autopsy for the stage" of the Russian composer's legendary ("Leningrad") Symphony No. 7. By no means does she stay true to the monumental piece of music, however. Instead, the performers create what amounts to an expressionist portrait of the present featuring unbridled dancing, unexpected singing and texts that brim with black humour. The three women transform their personal moments of destruction, of beauty, of comfort, of eroticism to excess. In the process, fragility and obscenity are not contradictions in themselves.
Choreography: Elina Pirinen, Dance: Kati Korosuo, Katja Sallinen and Elina Pirinen, Lighting design: Tomi Humalisto, Texts: Heidi Väätänen, Composition: Dmitri Šostakovitš, Costumes: Elina Pirinen, Kaisa Rissanen and Mila Moisio, Photography: Timo Wright, Production: Zodiak - Center for New Dance, Moving in November -festival and Elina Pirinen. Residency: WorkspaceBrussels / Summer coaching residency, Koneen säätiö, Finnish Cultural Institute for the Benelux
Premiere and performances:
7 - 19 November 2013, Moving in November -festival + Zodiak - Center for New Dance, Helsinki
Toured at Barker Theatre (Turku, Finland), Künstlerhaus Mousonturm (Frankfurt, Germany), ImpulsTanz (Vienna, Austria), Tanz im August (Berlin, Germany), NEXT festival (Kortrijk, Belgium), Nordwind -tour: Hellerau (Dresden, Germany), Kampnagel (Hamburg, Germany), Dampfzentrale (Bern, Switzerland), Black Box, Oslo Internasjonale Teaterfestival (Oslo, Norway), New York Live Arts, Joyce Unleashed (New York, USA)
Marianne
A performance-installation and video about a memory of a play. Written by Ana Mendes in 2011, based on 'Persona' by Ingmar Bergman.
Performers: Ana Mendes, Kati Korosuo and Tomas Gonzalez, Director: Goncalo Robalo, Residencies: Arc artist residency (Romanmötier, Switzerland), TanzQuartier (Vienna, Austria) and Theatre Sevelin 36 (Lausanne, Switserland), Support: Kulturkontakt Austria, BMUKK (Bilderministerium fur Unterricht, Kunst und Kultur Austria), Co-production: Migros Culture Percentage
Zoo
In Zoo, the dramaturge-director Katariina Numminen examines the role of the viewer by drawing a parallel between the zoo and the theatre. This performance placed between dance and theatre has its starting point in conversations recorded secretly at the Helsinki Zoo in 2012 and 2013. All of the recordings have been compiled in written form. Zoo sets this banal mass of text in motion. Enchantment, boredom, guilt, arousal, suffering and joy. What sensations does a human convey when looking at an animal? The performance places the human in the position of an animal and constructs the choreography of viewing. How does one look at a human like one looks at a beast?
Concept, dramaturgy and direction: Katariina Numminen, Choreography: Anna Maria Häkkinen, Performance: Anna Maria Häkkinen, Kati Korosuo, Lotta Suomi, Tuomas Tulikorpi, Tuire Tuomisto and Sami Vehmersuo, Set and costume design: Paula Koivunen, Lighting design: Minna Tiikkainen, Sound design: Jouni Tauriainen, Production Zodiak - Center for New Dance, Circus Maximus and artistic team, Photography: Elina Brotherus
Premiere and performances:
7 - 19 March 2014, Zodiak - Center for New Dance, Helsinki
4 - 5 October 2014, Mousonturm, Frankfurt, Germany
22 August 2015, Grey Cube Festival, Korkeasaari Zoo, Helsinki
Homage to Money
In "Homage to Money", we dedicate an ascension party to money: six performers lead through drama, dance and music through an unreal theater evening, enriched with ancient myths, fantasy images, personal confessions and scientific analyzes. A ghost hunt through the mirror labyrinth of dreamlike realities, an artistic journey of discovery into the beauty and horror of this idol - to the place where money lives: right in our hearts.
Directing: Oded Littman, Performance: Sophia Cristina Rodriguez, Stephan Stock, Kati Korosuo, Thom Reinhard, Lea Whitcher and Fabian Chiquet, Stage: Jasmin Wiesli, Lighting design: Hunor von Horvath. Music: Fabian Chiquet, Mentor: Roberto Fratini Serafide, Production manager: Rabea Grand, Choreographic cooperation: Teresa Vittucci, Coproduction by Koop - Concert Theater Bern and the theater collective Milch / Gänse in cooperation with the theater department of the Bern University of the Arts (final master level project), Photography: Thomas Quartier and Thom Reinhard
Premiere and performances:
10 - 18 February 2013, Bern City Theatre, Switzerland
23 May 2013, Gessnerallee Zürich, Switzerland