Susanna Leinonen is one of the most internationally acclaimed Finnish choreographers. She has received the Finland prize and the Dance Work of the Year award (2004) and the Helsinki Cultural Prize (2012). In 2010 Susanna Leinonen was nominated for the Benois de la Dance Prize.
Leinonen’s works have toured in nearly 30 countries in several festivals and venues such as Julidans, The Place, and Dance Biennale Tokyo. She has also created commissioned works for major companies such as the Royal Swedish Ballet, the Finnish National Ballet, Gothenburg Ballet, Danish Dance Theatre, Nürnberg Ballet, and Skånes Dansteater.
Susanna Leinonen Company was formed in 2001 and is financially supported by the Arts Promotion Centre Finland and the City of Helsinki.
The group is above all recognized by its movement language, which tends to express the complexity of life in all its subtlety. Leinonen collaborates with composers and top video, set, and costume designers to create original and breathtaking performances.
AVAILABLE WORKS
Susanna Leinonen Company’s repertoire currently consists of Nasty (2018), TOXIC (2020), and Body (2021). Read more about the productions on the artist’s website here.
Nasty is a strikingly topical work that centers on the expectations, limitations and attacks targeted at our bodies. The piece presents an unvarnished vision of our world, where evil hides in the structures of society but also in ourselves: we pass along the injustice and cruelty we have experienced.
Susanna Leinonen Company’s works are known for their extremely skillful and demanding movement. This time choreographer Leinonen and her ensemble have chosen to examine our bodily limits, as well as how constantly being looked at and under conflicting demands and expectations shape the female body and experience. In the center of the work are dancers and their bodies as tools of artistic work. In Nasty, the highly trained physique becomes a machine that stretches, bends, and creaks to fulfill its full potential. But the question remains: who gets to define that potential?
“….utterly brilliant and undoubtedly one of the finest contributions to the debate on women’s right to self-determination.” Annikki Alku, Demokraatti 10.9.2018
Photos Slider: Dirk Sevenants, Julian Venado, Mirkku Merimaa, Mirka Kleemola, Roosa Oksaharju.