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KUNST-STOFF - Yin, Yang of Dance - KUNST-STOFF anniversary : Co-founders' classical training, spontaneous spirit fuel S.F. troupe
Photo by Chelsea Rowe

Yin, Yang of Dance - KUNST-STOFF anniversary : Co-founders' classical training, spontaneous spirit fuel S.F. troupe

Thursday, February 14, 2008

San Francisco Chronicle Rachel Howard Most dance companies start out quietly: a humble performance, a friends-and-family audience. Not so for KUNST-STOFF, the intellectually challenging, Euro-hip troupe that began in the Mission District in 1998. "It started at 4:30 with the gallery openings - we had art in three rooms. Then for the actual show we had two evening-length pieces," says choreographer Tomi Paasonen. "It was megalomaniac. Ten films until midnight. Then a DJ party. We had to add an extra performance, and it sold out." Celebrating its 10th anniversary this weekend at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Theater, KUNST-STOFF still has the spirit of a spontaneous outpouring. Perhaps that's because co-founders Paasonen (who is Finnish) and Yannis Adoniou (who hails from Greece) have been sharing their creative work with each other since they were teenage students at Germany's Hamburg Ballet School. Those were heady years, when both famous ballet dancers (Maya Plisetskaya, Fernando Bujones) and leading-edge choreographers (Mats Ek, Jiri Kylian) passed through Hamburg's halls. Adoniou and Paasonen absorbed all those influences, then came West to dance for Alonzo King, founder of Lines Ballet. They came up with a kind of dance company that hadn't been seen in San Francisco before. "We were about feeding off our environment, whether that was contact improvisation or Trannyshack," Paasonen says. "I remember one of our early shows, we used both Diablo Ballet and a drag queen." Unfortunately, by the time KUNST-STOFF took off, Paasonen's performing career had been ended by a back injury, and in 2000 he lost his U.S. visa, leaving Adoniou to run the company. But the two describe themselves as a creative yin and yang, and their connection continues across the continents. For the anniversary, Paasonen, the "more cerebral," will unveil a dance about "what happens when the heart isn't the director," he says, using sounds recorded both at a former Hitler military academy in Berlin and at Seventh and Market streets, where KUNST-STOFF rehearses at the San Francisco Dance Center. Adoniou, the "more intuitive," is premiering a work about "nirvana, ecstasy, the state we all strive for," he says. The soundscore combines the primal cries of Korean-born singer Dohee Lee with tribal drumming and "cathedral-like" electronic contributions from composer Jethro DeHart. In between comes a dance that Adoniou calls a kind of lullaby: a solo created for his lithe, elegant body. KUNST-STOFF has grown up over the past decade: The eight-dancer-strong company is touring more and recently hired a full-time manager. These performances in the YBCA's grand theater will be a far cry from the trip to Burning Man when Paasonen and Adoniou invited the crowd to join in the dancing - and thousands rushed a 20-by- 30-foot stage. "We've come to a place where the same passion exists," Adoniou says. "But hopefully there's more structure." Download a PDF version of this article.