Tomi Paasonen
In “Retrospectrum – 5 solos for 5 decades”, the 50-year-old choreographer and dancer Tomi Paasonen lets the kinetic and aesthetic archives of his own works flow through his own body. Never has he danced in one of his own pieces before. In 1997 an accident ended his dancing career abruptly. With this solo, he realizes something he has been avoiding for decades. Now it is time for his first solo piece.
For 9 moths he has been undergoing a deep archival period. Now he will continue by incorporating elements of it back onto his own body, so see where it him. Retrospectrum is not a retrospective, but an independent piece that refocuses a life’s work into a new form. A look back that moves forward. It is not so much an autobiography, but rather an opening of worlds that results from a process of archiving, consolidation, distillation and self-embodiment of his previous works.
Choreographer and director Tomi Paasonen has choreographed almost 70 pieces over the past 3 decades. His work is characterized by always doing things that he has never done before. He has worked in a wide variety of contexts and has realized projects with dancers and artists from different disciplines as well as laymen, differently abled dancers and different kinds of minorities. Over the years, he has developed a diverse archive of choreographic and aesthetic working methods and approaches. After 5 years as artistic director of a dance center, where he concentrated less on his own work, he now creates his first solo piece.