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

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 ÖhmanPerformance: 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