Theo Clinkard (choreography)
Clinkard’s practice spans choreography, theatre design, performance and pedagogy. Since launching his company in 2012, he has steadily built an international reputation for creating affecting and visually arresting work that focuses on the communicative potential of the body and the empathetic nature of dance in performance.
Through his work, Clinkard celebrates dancers and dancing. His process begins by responding to context and designing unique situations for audiences and specific casts of performers, as environments for memorable connection. Increasingly, he is working with somatic practices and the imaginative realm, to understand how the performer’s live enquiry can articulate a landscape of feelings and ideas for the viewer.
Clinkard creates work for small, middle and large-scale theatres as well as non-theatre settings. Company productions include Ordinary Courage, Of Land & Tongue and This Bright Field; his recent large-scale work for twelve dancers and live music that was co-produced by Dance4 and premiered at Brighton Festival, before touring the UK. His company have toured to Chile, Ireland, Switzerland, Germany and presented work at both British Dance Edition and Tanzmesse in 2016. Commissions include, Somewhat still, when seen from above for Tanztheatre Wuppertal Pina Bausch and The Listening Room for Danza Contemporanea de Cuba.
Clinkard is an Associate Artist at Brighton Dome and Festival, Dance4 and an Honorary Fellow of Plymouth University.
Maria Nurmela (performance)
Maria Nurmela works since 2002 as a freelance dance artist.
She has collaborated as a dancer with known choreographers including Susanne Linke, Helena Franzén, Yuval Pick and Tero Saarinen, in whos Company TSC she has worked since 2003 also as a repetitor of Saarinen´s creations, teacher of TERO technique and leading TSC’s community outreach project Apollo tanssii!.
Maria´s own choreographies consists of transdisciplinary and site-specific performances combining different theatrical tools. These often immersive and multisensory works have been performed in Palais de Tokyo (Paris 2018), Wäinö Aaltonen Museum of Art (Turku 2017), Judson Memorial Church (NY 2010) among other venues. Along her artistic career she regularly teaches at institutions such as the University of the Arts Helsinki.
Her artistry has been recognized by a Ballet/Tanz Year Book nomination as one of the most remarkable female performers of season 2008, as well as by numerous grants such as ABOA price 2020 from City of Turku and residencies.
Ville Oinonen (performance)
Ville Oinonen is a Finnish freelance dancer who has danced in more than forty works professionally.
Oinonen graduated in year 2006 from Kuopio Music and Dance Academy to be a dance teacher but was immediately after studies engaged with Dance Theatre MD.
For approximately half of the time Oinonen has worked as a professional dancer, he has danced in the Dance Theatre MD (2006–2009 and 2014–2017) in pieces by many well-known Finnish choreographers e.g. with Jyrki Karttunen and Tero Saarinen. Rest of the time he has worked as a freelancer, and this has taken him e.g. to Sweden to work with Helena Franzén and the award-winning dance company Art of Spectra.
Occasionally Oinonen also works as a teacher himself for example in places like TROIS C-L Centre de Création Choréographique Luxembourgeois.
Kalle Ropponen (lighting designer)
Helsinki-based lighting designer Kalle Ropponen works as a visual designer in the field of performing arts in Finland.
He has collaborated with the Finnish National Ballet and the Finnish National Theatre, and has participated in numerous freelance productions. Ropponen and Maria Nurmela have previously collaborated in the Turku Art Association and in the play "PASSION - love according to G.H.", based on Clarice Lispector's book and presented in Turku, at the Kolmas tila (Third Space) arts collective.
James Keane (composer)
Trained at Trinity College of Music. A composer, multi-instrumentalist and improviser, he has written and performed for dance, theatre, TV, animation and recitals and has conducted music for opera, concerts, TV, films, and CDs.
Recent compositions include a piece for Lizzi Kew-Ross for string quartet and dancers inspired by the work of Edmund De Waal and Paul Celan, a recreation of two Rudolf Laban pieces with choreographer Alison Curtis-Jones in Monte Verita Switzerland, a new piece for Joss Arnott Dance played live by Dame Evelyn Glennie which she is now performing as a recital piece and music and sound design for Theo Clinkard’s new commission from Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch.
Leah Marojevic (outside eye)
Leah, originally from the UK, spent three months with Sydney Dance Company’s PreProfessional Year after graduating from the Victorian College of the Arts with a Bachelor of Dance in Melbourne, Australia 2013. Leah was the recipient of the Australian Council for the Arts, ArtStart Grant in 2015 and received the Orloff Family Trust award for ‘Most Outstanding Dancer’ in 2013. Leah is a contemporary dance artist who performs, produces performance, choreographs, writes, teaches, directs and artistically supports other dance makers. Leah collaborates regularly with Theo Clinkard and Colette Sadler, and has worked with choreographers, visual artists and companies; Sarah Browne, Joe Moran, Megan Rooney, Candoco Dance Company, Mirjam Gurtner, Clod Ensemble, Seke Chimutengwende, and Becky Hilton among others.
