The experimental postmodern ballet troupe Kunst-Stoff instantly became one of San Francisco’s most promising companies when it appeared in 1998. Much has changed since.

This past weekend’s 11th annual home season trumpeted “Yannis Adoniou’s Kunst-Stoff,” as co-founder Tomi Paasonen and the longtime dancers have left. Yet, with a cast that has been pared to four relative newcomers, this was some of Adoniou’s most engaging work in many a season. Saturday’s two world premieres felt like a return to the playful and bold Kunst-Stoff of yore, enriched by experience.

Setting was key: After uneven attempts to make dances for large proscenium stages, Adoniou has returned to intimacy. He arranged the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Forum with the audience on four sides, only two rows deep and on ground level with the dancers.

From the east front row rose violinist Paul Festa, crossing the floor in red pencil skirt and false eyelashes, playing two slow repeating notes. The two notes are the foundation of the mournful Alfred Schnittke string quartet (arranged for solo violin by Nathaniel Stookey) from which “(Where) Every Verse Is Filled With Grief” adapts its title.

The dance had a beautifully clear, propulsive form. Justin Andrews and Marina Fukushima shared a duet in which they were constantly touching, yet emotionally distant; then Spencer Dickhaus and Suzanne Lappas took the floor in jeans and swaths of red for a swirling dance in which they never touched but felt always connected.

Dickhaus has a long, adolescently lean body and can rise from Adoniou’s vocabulary of slinky crouches and broken-angled limbs into an exquisitely turned-out retire position or a classically pristine arabesque turn. Lappas does not have the finesse of extensive ballet training but brings a punk intensity.

Both spent a lot of time with hands planted to the floor, legs waving above, building to a climax of side-by-side synchronicity. Festa’s live performance contributed immeasurably.

Adoniou collaborated with dramaturge Talal Al-Muhana on “Rags al Moza,” a free-associating piece of absurdist dance theater that falls short as cultural commentary, but succeeds as a framework for bits of beautiful movement experimentation.

An interesting elbow-pushing duet was set to Radiohead, and a looser duet to Tom Waits; David Petrelli DJ’d the score live, also mixing original music by Alex Davis. Fukushima was gamely but never too cute, whether asking an audience member to feed her a banana or flailing in Dickhaus’ arms.

Kunst-Stoff tours Europe this summer before returning for a residency at CounterPULSE. The troupe is clearly in a groove.

Laughing and crying, you know it’s the same release
-Joni Mitchell

May 2004 – San Francisco CA Yannis Adoniou’s KUNST-STOFF heads into its 11th San Francisco home season with two world premieres both choreographed by Adoniou: (Where) Every Verse is Filled with Grief and Raqs al Moza. While Raqs is a collaboration with dramaturge Talal Al-Muhanna, Grief will feature violinist Paul Festa performing live, the music of pioneering European composer Alfred Schnittke, arranged by Nathaniel Stookey.

When: June 12 & 13 @8pm; June 14 @ 7pm
Where: YBCA Forum 701 Mission St @ 3rd San Francisco, CA 94103-3138
415.978.ARTS (2787)
Tickets: $18-22 @ YBCA Box Office

Stage as Boxing Ring?
Each of the dances will be performed in YBCA’s Forum, set up boxing-ring fashion, i.e. the audience seated around the perimeter of a 50 x 50 square at the same level as the dancers. This allows for four very different views of the action and accelerates the impact of the dancing on the audience. The purpose, says Adoniou, is to bring the viewer as close as possible to the dancers so he or she can sense the confusion, fear and emotional journey taking place inside the ring. Much like an audience at a real boxing match has the opportunity to do.

Juxtaposing Grief and Humor
Grief is not an uncommon emotion expressed in dance. Humor is both rarer and trickier to pull off. The slate of Raqs and Grief juxtaposes these thematically challenging to work with opposites into a single evening. Adoniou wants to shake assumptions, customs and apathy. Its important, he says, to remember how crucial laughter and humor are in maintaining perspective.

Raqs al Moza (40 minutes)
In Arabic Raqs al Moza means Banana Dance. About love during wartime, Raqs can almost be seen as a silent movie comedy featuring a boy, a girl and a single table. More theater based than Grief, it uses black outs, scene changes and timing in order to answer questions like, what makes us laugh? Or, why is someone falling down sometimes funny and sometimes not so much?

Work on Raqs al Moza began in March 2008 when Mr. Adoniou was in residence at the Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography. Together with Talal Al-Muhanna, he found himself wanting to explore a theme often absent from the intensely introspective act of choreography: humor.

Original music featured in Raqs is the work of Florida-based composer and sound designer Alex Davis, with whom Adoniou collaborated during his recent MANCC residency, in addition to music from Tom Waits and Radiohead.

Dancers are: Marina Fukushima, Spencer Dickhaus, Justin Andrews

(Where) Every Verse is Filled with Grief (10 minutes)
(Where) Every Verse is Filled with Grief is an amplification and personification of the energy and expressiveness of the music being played live by violinist Paul Festa. Starting with a small prologue, it moves onto a larger canvas of surrender and abandonment, driven by the waves of energy that make up sadness, anguish and despair.

Grief will feature a male and female duet danced topless. The purpose is not to expose the woman as much as reveal the vulnerability of the male torso.

Grief is set to the haunting music of pioneering European composer, Alfred Schnittke. Arranged by Nathaniel Stookey, of The Composer is Dead fame among other things, it will be played live by violinist Paul Festa. The score, says Adoniou, is stunning. I am thrilled at being able to work with artists of Nathanial and Paul’s abilities.

Dancers are: Suzanne Lappas, Spencer Dickhaus, Marina Fukushima, Justin Andrews

In the end, reiterates Adoniou, I want to create work that juxtaposes heaviness and sorrow with lightheartedness and vitality. And leave an audience feeling a sense of catharsis and freedom. That we’ve told a tale with true emotional scope.

About Yannis Adoniou and KUNST-STOFF
Yannis Adoniou’s KUNST-STOFF is a San Francisco-based, Goldie award winning, contemporary dance company that has been creating eclectic movement-focused art experiences in the Bay Area for the past 10 years. Under the artistic direction of Yannis Adoniou, the company will celebrate its 11th Anniversary Season with two world premieres at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts main stage in June 2009. These premieres are a continuation of more than a decade-long dedication to creating conceptually driven work that challenges and expands the boundaries of our perception. With themes that reflect upon and respond to contemporary society, KUNST-STOFF’s work reaches across cultural and social boundaries in search of that which resonates on a universal level. Visit KUNST-STOFF.org for more information

About Paul Festa
Paul Festa (musician) studied violin at the Juilliard School before studying English at Yale, from which he graduated with honors. His award-winning fi lm Apparition of the Eternal Church has been screened at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, Orchestra Hall in Minneapolis, London’s Barbican Centre and the Library of Congress. He is the author of OH MY GOD: Messiaen in the Ear of the Unbeliever, an adaptation of that fi lm. His essays appear in three Best Sex Writing editions, Nerve: The First Ten Years and online at The Daily Beast, Salon and other publications. He premiered Messiaen’s Fantasie in Boston, New York, San Francisco, L.A. and Washington DC. As a violinist and actor he has appeared with the Stephen Pelton Dance Theater and the North Bay Shakespeare Company. Residencies include the MacDowell Colony, the City of Paris/Centre des Récollets and ODC Theater. For more information visit paulfesta.com.

About Nathaniel Stookey
Composer/arranger and San Francisco native Nathaniel Stookey has collaborated with a remarkable range of artists from The Mars Volta to the Philadelphia Orchestra. At age 23 he was awarded the first Hallé Orchestra Composition Fellowship, serving as resident composer under Kent Nagano 1993-96. In 2000, having returned to the US, Stookey received a three-year New Residencies award from Meet The Composer to serve as composer-in-residence with the North Carolina Symphony. That partnership yielded five new works, including Big Bang for the opening of Meymandi Hall, Wide as Skies for the centennial of the first manned flight (a co- commission with the Dayton Philharmonic) and Out of the Everywhere for the final subscription concerts of retiring music director Gerhardt Zimmermann. In 2006 the San Francisco Symphony premiered their commissioned work, The Composer is Dead, with libretto by Lemony Snicket, which was immediately taken up by the Toronto Symphony’s New Creations Festival and has since been programmed by orchestras across North America including the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Chicago Civic Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Dallas Symphony.

Although it took 247 years for Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice to reach Palo Alto, it was worth the wait. The West Bay Opera audience had every reason to cheer. The care and imagination that company general director/conductor José Luis Moscovich and stage director José Maria Condemi lavished on their ostensibly low-budget production made for a marvelous evening of theater and music.

Set and video designer Jean-François Revon worked closely with lighting designer Robert Ted Anderson and costumer Maria Crush to create magic from simple sets. The key was the lighting: brilliant colors and oft-changing patterns projected on simple curved partitions and backdrops made the journey through the Underworld and out again visually captivating. Another innovation was the use of every inch of the Lucie Stern Auditorium’s backstage, at one point extending the set way beyond the back curtain to depict Euridice’s entrance from another plane.

Seen on opening night, February 20, the production managed to balance Gluck’s rather static musical tableaux with constant movement. Between Amore’s entrance on a balloon-festooned bicycle, sporting a pink tutu, ridiculous pigtails and a leather “AMORE” backpack, and the highly effective choreography of Yannis Adoniou’s five-member KUNST-STOFF Dance Company, attention was diverted as much by the visuals as by the high quality of the singing.

In Sarah Barber (Orfeo), Moscovich presented a rich-voiced, imaginative artist who, with androgynous slicked-back hair and baggy clothes, actually looked the part. Tall, strong and capable of holding her own in a balletic pas de deux, the mezzo was a major find. Only in striving for extra pathos in “Che faro senza Euridice” did she push her voice beyond its limits. Soprano Maria Alu (Eurydice), making her WBO debut, proved lovely in voice and appearance. That she could move gracefully in ballet slippers and interact with KUNST-STOFF’s dancers made her ideal for a production in which the line between singer and dancer was intentionally blurred.

Soprano Shawnette Sulker was a joy as Amore. Although her voice shines most in the upper range – Olympia, Oscar, Adele and the Queen of the Night are among her roles –  her innate joie de vivre carried the day. While the beautiful singing from eighteen choristers was not a surprise, their ability to interact seamlessly with the dancers was. Condemi and Adoniou worked wonders in transforming their former ragtag appearance into something vital (although he could do only so much with the plethora of larger-bodied older men). At least one of the three first violinists made far too many intonation slips, but the delightful winds at the start of “Che puro ciel! Che chiaro sol!” more than made amends.

JASON VICTOR SERINUS

link to original post

Over Feb. 14 to 16, Yannis Adoniou and Tomi Paasonen’s oddly named offspring, KUNST-STOFF, celebrated its 10th anniversary. The company had its first performance during the dot-com bubble at what was then San Francisco’s most in venue, Brady Street Theater – where you couldn’t find a parking place but did get some of the edgiest performances in town. You wouldn’t dare miss KUNST-STOFF’s total concept theater, in which multimedia reigned to suggest high-tech, futuristic fantasies. Performers donned bubble wrap or stuffed body stockings with shape-altering balloons. Theirs was a place where design ruled and rules existed to be broken. But then the bubble burst. That initial infusion of venture capital – which had also financed art exhibits, DJ parties, and high-powered advertising – evaporated. Brady Street was sold. Paasonen lost his visa and returned to Europe. He would contribute a work periodically, but Adoniou was pretty much left by himself to redirect the company. Actually, he wasn’t quite left alone. He still had a group of highly committed dancers who allowed him to continue looking at the intersection of design and movement.

At a dress rehearsal prior to the anniversary program – which contained three world premieres – three dancers who’ve been with the company since the beginning looked better than ever. Nicole Bonadonna, Kara Davis, and Leslie Schickel were gloriously fearless, embracing physical and emotional risks they might have been more hesitant to do a decade ago.

Even without an audience, the company (which also includes Justin Kennedy, Marina Fukushima, John Mercke, Erin Kraemer, and Dwayne Worthington) was fierce. It made you realize that while dancers talk a lot about the feedback they get from spectators, they ultimately dance for themselves and one another.

Watching the dancers rehearse phrases on a naked stage in punk street clothes and Haight Street throwaways, it took me a while to realize they were wearing Jeremy Chase Sanders’s costumes for Paasonen’s Out of Hand. When they started the piece the music seemed ridiculously loud, though much of the sound would be swallowed up when the seats were full of bodies at the performance.

Paasonen has said the dark Out of Hand contrasts the debris of American foreign policy, as demonstrated on a mountain-of-rubble Berlin, with choreography based on the movement language of people around Seventh Street and Market in San Francisco. It is a grim piece about negotiating danger and keeping yourself steady. Adoniou’s imaginative solo for himself was created “in dialogue with Alonzo King” and asked some King-type questions about the meaning of the universe and one’s place in it. The choreographer took the phrase “having the rug pulled out from under you” and translated it into a meditation on balance, seeking, and letting go. Finally, the extraordinary Korean musician and performer Dohee Lee (with musician Jethro DeHart) set the ecstatic tone for Adoniou’s Un State, a paean at once to the individuality of KUNST-STOFF’s dancers and to the expressive power of the human body. It seemed an appropriate finale for a 10th-anniversary concert.

As the dancers headed for snacks and dressing rooms and Adoniou finessed a duet onstage, Paasonen, back for these shows only, talked about making dances here and in Berlin. “Berlin is very demanding, very competitive, [and] people are very territorial,” he said. “This is a community.”

Download a PDF version of this article.

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.

“Experimental” is a favorite term in the dance world, one too many dance-goers have learned to equate with “amateur” So when KUNST–STOFF, a company of highly trained dancers founded by two former members of the stunning LINES Ballet, readily describes its work this way, we’ve got to applaud the risk. Not content to dazzle audiences with the sheer technical merits of the eight members (which, trust us, they could), choreographers Yannis Adoniou and Tomi Paasonen layer the dancing into multitiered, multisensory art experience. In past shows, photographic imagery, video design, and sculpture by Paasonen (among the most memorable being a translucent tube resembling a birth canal from which dancers emerged naked) have frequently studded the stage. We don’t know if the three premieres that make up KUNST–STOFF’s 10th Anniversary Season will feature such curiosities, but what we can promise are characteristically conceptual ditties ranging in topic from an abandoned Cold War spying compound in Paasonen’s hometown of Berlin to the physical rituals used to transport souls to nirvana. Oh, yes, and the likelihood that you’ll leave with renewed faith that “experimental” really can mean brave.

Download a PDF version of this article.

You can pronounce KUNST-STOFF with a little Germanic ‘sh’ added to the stoff and a very oo-sounding kunst and you’ll still only be half-way in the know. Part-two is its rather multi-layered definition. KUNST-STOFF means, well, something rather mundane according to director Yannis Adoniou. It has to do, in German, with plastic and recycling. However, the word kunst also means art. Plastic, recycling, art. This is the dance company Yannis Adoniou formed with Tomi Paasonen ten years ago. They were two European ballet dancers picked by Alonzo King to dance in San Francisco for LINES Ballet (Adoniou stayed with the company for seven years). And they were both interested in making their own dances.

It was their background in ballet, as technicians, all disciplined and detail-oriented, that gave them the refreshing counterweight to the new styles they were learning: California-friendly, free-wheeling experimentalism which can be a trap. This dichotomy, a two-headed way of moving, gives the work its kinesthetic charge and often palpable beauty. The dance company does live up to its name – in spirit and in irony and in bohemian cool-embodied in a band of ballet-trained modern dancers with a Greek director, Finnish house choreographer, German name and San Francisco address. “My work doesn’t belong anywhere,” said Adoniou in a recent interview, “and that’s not what America is used to.”

Ten years is a long time in the Mission. Dancers grow weary and give up practically every day. Choreographers fail, constantly. Adoniou has a different kind of fatalism, an appreciation for the freedom it means to be in the Bay Area, not the other – the provincialism, lack of funding, lack of jobs. “The Bay Area is a great place,” he says. “You have to believe in your approach. You will be recognized. Listen to your own voice.”

Success has certainly followed Adoniou’s company (even after co-founder Tomi Paasonen moved to Berlin in 1997), from ODC and all the other theatres in the Mission, to Burning Man, to the International Arts Center in Athens, to the SCUBA tour that recently hooked small to mid-sized regional dance companies up with presenters all over the US, and now to Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, where they will be celebrating their birthday on February 14-16. “We really have nothing to lose (out here),” he says. “We can afford to play – be different.”

KUNST-STOFF approaches dance concerts as opportunities to explore different themes. In 1999, the company looked at nostalgia. Several years have been media focused, with live feed video, collaborations with photographers, motion capture. Now there is ritual. Three world premieres in the company’s home season will explore various aspects of ritual and the ways we ritualize our lives today.

“Out of Hand” is Mr. Paasonen’s investigation of homeless people, of false ecstasies and false happiness. “Succinct” will be a structured solo improv for Mr. Adoniou under the direction of Alonzo King, who asked the question, “What is clean energy? What is pure?” Adoniou’s new group piece, “un state,” is a collaboration with composer Dohee Lee that explores the spiritual essence of ecstasy, the physicality required to achieve nirvana.

Speaking of rituals, Adoniou can recount many. On a tour to Hawaii, the dancers of KUNST-STOFF were invited by a prominent hula teacher to visit her studio. Here, the ritual was one of entrance, as each person that arrived at the studio had to chant, one at a time, in order to clear the energy for dancing. There were also lots of rituals back in Greece growing up, where plates were broken at weddings, and the seasons were marked with picking of flowers in May, and then the ritual of burning of summer flowers later on, of negative energy released, dances with cowbells, of village life as it still exists there.

“The idea of a dance, of moving through time and space, is to create a vibration the viewer can get, feel, create, and use to get out his own emotions,” Adoniou says. It was no doubt the seven years under the tutelage of one-of-a-kind master Alonzo King that helped create the choreographer that Adoniou is today. “The task with LINES was to go back to the true essence. Where ballet came from. When we know too much, we start controlling it… when we know how it is supposed to look, or feel, it’s time to go back to the essence. Back to spirit.

“You have to analyze, take the scientific approach to the physical laws of dance, you have to understand that,” he said. “But you want to get people emotionally involved. To create vibrations.”

For ten years, Adoniou says, he and the company have been blessed. Blessed, among other things, to serve as dance-company-in-residence at ODC for the last six years. Blessed that all of his original dancers, Nicole Bonadonna, Kara Davis, Leslie Schickel and Nol Simonse, are still dancing with him (along with several new ones).

It would seem likely that an ambitious artist like Adoniou would have imminent plans to decamp for New York or Europe. In fact, Tomi Paasonen took off for Berlin, where he is enjoying the opportunity to work in an atmosphere of conceptual art and multi-media domination over movement. Adoniou has no plans to leave, however. Why does he stay?

“San Francisco has a lot of artists,” he says. “Counterpulse, Dance Mission – there is something for us to learn, to change and have dialogue with here, to be able to jump from LINES to ODC to the Dance Commons, to have conversations with Scott Wells, Joe Goode, Robert Moses, Kathleen Hermesdorf, Sarah Shelton-Mann, Alonzo King, Rob Bailis, Matt Ingalls…”

KUNST-STOFF presents the company’s 10th Anniversary Season February 14-16, 8pm at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. For more information visit KUNST-STOFF.org. For tickets visit ybca.org or call 415-978-2787.

Michael Wade Simpson is editor of culturevulture.net and writes for the San Francisco Chronicle and other publications. He holds an MFA in dance from Smith College, and founded ‘Small City Dance Project” in Massachusetts.

SAN FRANCISCO, CA – January 7, 2008 – Yannis Adoniou’s KUNST-STOFF is pleased to announce that it will celebrate its 10th Anniversary San Francisco home season with a gala celebration and a three performances on the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts main stage in February 2008.

The performances will feature three World Premieres: un state, by Artistic Director, Yannis Adoniou, out of hand, by Berlin-based, in-house choreographer and KUNST-STOFF co-founder, Tomi Paasonen, and solo for yannis. Mr. Adoniou himself will take the stage to perform solo for yannis, a solo work whose concept was developed in dialog with Alonzo King and is being created in collaboration with Mr. Paasonen. The evening’s works all explore the concept of ritual in contemporary times with an approach unique to each choreographer.

These works are a continuation of a decade-long dedication to creating conceptually driven work that challenges and expands the boundaries of perception. With themes that reflect upon and respond to contemporary society, KUNST-STOFF’s work reaches across cultural and social boundaries in search of that which resonates on a universal level. While versed in the realm of established dance techniques, the company’s work steps outside of the “known” with a distinctive movement style that extends the body beyond codified limits.

KUNST-STOFF has had the honor of appearing on the stages of some of the most dedicated dance presenters in the Bay Area as well as touring both nationally and internationally, Concluding its Artists-in-Residence at ODC Theater this year, the company looks forward to traveling to Tallahassee, FL for its month-long residence at the Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography in April 2008.

Over the past 10 years, KUNST-STOFF’s unusual and highly visual theatrical dance works have drawn in collaborators from a variety of different mediums. This year, the company is pleased to feature original sound scores by, Dohee Lee, David Jude Thomas and Jethro DeHart.

Dohee Lee is an up-and-coming contemporary composer, musician, and performer based in the Bay Area. Her roots in traditional Korean dance and drumming have developed and evolved through working with many artists of many different disciplines. Through her forum, The Puri Project, she provides opportunities for artists to cross stylistic boundaries between traditional and contemporary art forms in an organic manner. She has recently collaborated with Nanos Operetta and Kronos Quartet.

Jethro DeHart has moonlighted as musical director for KUNST-STOFF on and off for the past 10 years, composing, mixing/engineering, designing sound, and on occasion, performing live with the Company. Mr. DeHart can also be spotted fronting the San Francisco alternative band “Habitforming” appearing on 3 full length releases, “Habitat”, “Involved” and “Slow Motion Drifting”.

David Jude Thomas is a San Francisco, multi-media artist who has lived and worked in the Bay Area for nearly 15 years. He is currently involved in several documentary/narrative projects and created a visual interpretation of movement and dance for multi-screen projections for the CalArts Dance Ensemble’s 29th Season in 2006. He has written, produced, shot, edited and
composed numerous short films and video pieces such as “Requiem 1 & 2″, “Cry me a River”, “Jarman”, “Thursday’s Child”, “Girl Eats Apple” and the feature length film “Metalface”.

The company is also pleased to have co-founder and former co-artistic director, Tomi Paasonen, joining the company to create a new work for the 10th Anniversary Season. Since Mr. Paasonen moved to Berlin in 2001, he has operating under the name PAA (Public Artistic Affairs), he as created award-winning productions such as State of Being with disabled and professional dancers and Icarus- Departure Tegel, a co-production with Germany’s largest male prison.

Paasonen was a soloist dancer with Hamburg Ballet, LINES Ballet San Francisco and The Joffrey Ballet. His unique ability to bridge his classical background with avant-guard experimentalism makes Mr. Paasonen a rare hybrid in the dance world. For years he has develop his interactive visual art concepts and choreographic systems and dance improvisation techniques that can be used universally by dancers from different kinds of backgrounds.
.
Artistic Director, Yannis Adoniou, a native of Athens, Greece, is an award-winning dancer, choreographer, and filmmaker. Since founding KUNST-STOFF in 1998, Mr. Adoniou has premiered over 20 new works in the Bay Area, toured internationally, and collaborated with nationally known visual and media artists and composers.

Mr. Adoniou was a member of Alonzo King’s LINES Contemporary Ballet for seven years and he currently serves as a teacher and choreographer at the San Francisco Dance Center, LINES Ballet School and LINES Ballet School Pre-professional Program.

Mr. Adoniou was nominated twice for the Bay Area’s Isadora Duncan Awards, winning an “Izzy” in 1998 for outstanding achievement in performance. His choreography has been hailed as “some of the most original dance or drama” by the San Francisco Chronicle, “multy-focused, ever-shifting work in which the viewer imposes his own perspective” by Dance View West and the San Francisco Examiner has praised KUNST-STOFF as being a “remarkably harmonized company” with “some of the finest ballet-trained daredevils to be found in any metropolis.”

Support for the creation of the work, solo for yannis, that will premiere this season, comes from an Individual Artist Grant to Mr. Adoniou from the San Francisco Arts Commission.

To find out more, please visit www.kunst-stoff.org

###

For further information:
Yannis Adoniou’s KUNST-STOFF
415.845.3040 ext 286
FAX 415.286.1180
press@kunst-stoff.org
www.kunst-stoff.org

Download this Press Release as a PDF.