ABOUT ME
I’m a Finnish contemporary dancer & performer living in Berlin and working as a freelancer all around Europe.
I was born in Tampere, Finland, where at the age of four I started dance training at the Virva Kabanov School of Dance. I was trained in classical ballet as well as in modern, contemporary and jazz technique in various dance schools in Finland. From an early age I gained at lot of performance and stage experience – not only with dancing but also singing, acting and playing violin.
In 2013 I graduated from DANCEWORKS berlin (under the direction of Carol Ellys), where I was taught by Yaara Dolev & Amit Goldenberg (DeDe Dance Company, Batsheva Dance Company) and Eric Dunlap (Forward Motion Theater, Alwin Nikolais / Murray Louis Dance Company), among others.
In September 2014 I was accepted to the international MASA Dance Journey program by the Kibbutz Contemporary Dance Company in Israel. During the time in Kibbutz Ga’aton I had the opportunity to learn from the leading Israeli dancers and choreographers as well as to create my own work on stage. For this program I received the Maggie Gripenberg Fund of the Finnish Cultural Foundation on 27th of February 2015. Afterwards I attended various workshops, including the Gaga Intensive in Tel Aviv and the Master Class at Vertico Eco Art Village, where I got further inspired by the rich Israeli dance scene.
2014-2021 I worked as a regular guest performer and rehearsal director at HELMNOT Theater. In 2019 I started to collaborate with the visual site-specific theater Grotest Maru. Besides performing in the Grotest Maru ensemble, I also work as their production assistant and social media manager. In the same year I began to work with the premium walk act company Dulce Compania. Since 2022 I’m a regular guest performer with Pantao as well as with Skaramouche Stelzentheater. In addition, I frequently work as a dancer and choreographic assistant to the choreographer & video artist Eric Dunlap.
Furthermore, my first collaborative project with the videographer Susu Rachidi (Cut That OuT), ‘STAGE’ was released in July 2019, and was part of the official selection of Moving Body Festival 2019 in Varna, Dare to Dance in Public Film Festival 2019 in Los Angeles and First-time Filmmaker Sessions 2019.
In 2020, I co-founded a stilt dance collective DANZANKÓ together with Esther Geyer and Clara Gracia. 2021 we received a DIS-TANZ-SOLO grant in the programme NEUSTART KULTUR, Hilfsprogramm DIS-TANZEN of the Dachverband Tanz Deutschland for our research focusing on developing a method of dancing on stilts. Our first creation DisTouched premiered in summer 2022 at Artspace Bremerhaven and has since been presented at the international theatre festival Sommerwerft, Kulturufer Friedrichshafen and Micro!Festival in Dortmund, among others. 2023 we received the Wiederaufnahmeförderung from the Fonds Darstellende Künste with funds from the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and Media within the program NEUSTART KULTUR. In the same year we were able to deepen our research and continue developing our method with the help of a renewed DIS-TANZ-SOLO grant.
Currently my professional focus is on physical and site-specific theater as well as stilt performance and stilt dancing.