| monni_cv_english_2018.pdf |
Kirsi Monni, bio (updated 2016)
Kirsi Monni has had a extensive career in dance; as choreographer, dancer, teacher, researcher, and developer of production structures of contemporary dance. Her list of works includes over 30 contemporary dance pieces with a common denominator of comprehensiveness of means of expression, historical consciousness, and existential philosophical manner. Monni was granted the Doctoral Degree in Dance at the Theatre Academy in 2004 and she has been Professor in Choreography and the head of the Master’s Degree Programme in Choreography at the Theatre Academy since 2009.
Dance studies: Monni studied at the Ballet School of the Finnish National Opera from 1970-1978, she was a scholarship holder at Helsingin tanssiopisto (Helsinki Dance Institute) from 1979-1981. In the 1980s she also took some courses both in Finland and abroad, e.g. at the School for New Dance Development in Amsterdam (SNDO) and at the Theatre Academy’s Adult Education Center in Helsinki. What became meaningful to her after classical ballet techniques are the so called new dance techniques, release technique, contact improvisation, tai chi and Hatha yoga which she has practiced since 1986. Important teachers of new dance techniques have been, e.g., Mary Prestidge and Mary Fulkerson. In the 1990s, Monni studied the Alexander technique for several years, with her teacher Dick Gilbert and, in the 2000s, she studied Deborah Hay’s method of practising bodily perception. These became essential starting points for bodily thinking and meaning creation in choreographic work. Since the 1980s, different psychosomatic meditation practices and Authentic Movement method have deepened her bodily understanding. In 2014, Monni studied to become an Asahi Health instructor under the guidance of Timo Klemola.
Academic Studies: Monni got her Bachelor’s Degree in Dance at the Theatre Academy Helsinki in 1995 and began her doctoral studies in dance in 1996. Her doctoral research was about changes in dance paradigms in the 1900s and drafting an ontology of dance since 1960s. She was granted the Doctoral Degree in Dance in 2004.
Artistic works: Monni’s list of works includes over 30 contemporary dance pieces with a common denominator of comprehensiveness of means of expression, historical consciousness, and existential philosophical manner. In the 1980s and in the beginning of 1990s, Monni was inspired by European experimental theatre, performance art, functional techniques of new dance, and sensitivity and soulfulness of bodily expression in Japanese Butoh dance. In her own work, she aimed to break down, on one hand, the aesthetic idealism reflected by classical ballet in relation to embodiment, and on the other hand, the way dominant modern dance techniques’ were abstracting the movement and structuring the choreographic language. The aim was to broaden the artistic possibilities of dance and to research dance’s relation to world also from the point of view of duration, perception, ritual, and performativity. By slowing down and simplifying the movement and exploring movements lived world-relation, Monni aimed to find sensible grounds for her choreographic language to be based on. Her special aim was to create intricate portrayals of women and humans and broaden the emotional and spiritual area in which dance was operating in Finland.
Her Alexander technique studies, which began in 1994, opened her a way back to a freer motility. The use-of-the self-in-movement-manner was found in the Alexander technique, which was based on kinaesthetic functionality and bodily perception without any ties to specific dance-aesthetic traditions. This made artistic processes free in relation to topic and theme; artistic research questions create each work’s special choreographic language and the way in which movement is structured.
Exploring the movement’s meaning experience and researching both artistic and societal world-relation of dance created a need to understand more deeply the historical contexts of dance and conceptualise artistic aims of contemporary dance. This lead Monni to start reflecting on the philosophy of movement through the publications of the University of Tampere from the beginning of the 1990s and through philosophy of dance through her own artistic doctoral degree in 1996-2004. The five works related to her artistic doctoral degree each reflect the lived world-relation of movement and the ontology of work of art in relation to 20th century dance’s new paradigm, which Monni has defined in her research.
In the beginning of the 2000s, Monni became acquainted with Choreographer-Writer Deborah Hay’s radical idea of dance where the starting point of movement is never a defined form of movement, rather it is perceiving the time-space event of being through bodily movements. “Perception practice” started to form a central starting point to thinking and working on choreographic and compositional structure. Her piece Aikakvartetto (2005) combined the use of different mediums throughout her career in a performance: movement, language and speech, visual imagery and human voice in parallel alongside lighting, sound, and space design, and having bodily perception practice as the starting point for the dancers’ movement. In her 2007 trio piece Friedenplatz, the choreography was formed entirely by a dancer as creative agent in a score structure, where the actual movement was based on bodily perception and bodily thinking, in dialogue with Giacinto Scelsi’s music and fellow dancers.
Monni’s work first as the artistic director of the Zodiak – Center for new dance and then as the Theatre Academy’s professor has taken up her time since 2008. Research, teaching, mentoring, editorial and administrative work have postponed her own artistic work but broadened significantly the views to dance art and artist’s work. Her latest own art work was a project presented in Zodiak Z-free stage in 2015: Violence on Stage – a representation laboratory with choreographer, dancer Joona Halonen and performance designer Mikko Hynninen. Her new work which was a study on the possibilities of choreography to handle the theme of media violence, Acts And Affects, with an ensemble of 6 dancers, was premiered on the Zodiak stage in April 2017.
Work as teacher and lecturer: Monni has worked also a teacher of dance since the 1980s, teaching mostly at the Department of Dance at the Theatre Academy where she has been a choreographer and a fee-based teacher of courses and workshops almost every year since 1987. In all of her teaching, Monni has emphasised understanding of dance techniques from the point of view of bodily-being-in-the world and the need to explore and openly research the movement’s world-relation as both existential and culturally formed matter. Throughout the 2000s, Monni has further developed the relationship of dance and research. She has created and provided extensive study materials for her history and theory lectures and seminars as well as for workshops of composition, improvisation and movement research for the students of dance and other performing arts programmes in BA, MA and Doctoral level.
Monni has been an active lecturer of dance related themes since the 1990s. She has had lectures both in academic and non-academic contexts in different universities, seminars, and events.
Work for the field of dance: Monni is a founding member of Zodiak presents association – a production community of contemporary dance (1986-1996). Zodiak was founded to be an artist-led production umbrella of new dance and an artist community, being a pioneer in this kind of operations model in Finland. Monni was actively part of Zodiak presents from 1986-1996 as a choreographer, dancer, and a member of artistic committee and board. Zodiak – Center for New Dance was formed in 1996 and Monni was actively part in different responsible roles until 2008. She took comprehensively part in developing the activities, artistic committees (chair), board, programme planning, and developing new forms of activity. In years 2006-2007, Monni was Head of artistic committee and Zodiak’s artistic director in 2008. Monni has also been in the artistic board of different festivals, contributing to the programme planning, for example, for the Theatre Academy’s Helsinki Act festival and Zodiak’s Side Step festival. Monni’s academic position of trust was to be a board member of Finnish Society for Aesthetics for 2009-2013. For 2015-2018, Monni is the member the performing arts committee of the Arts Promotion Centre Finland (chair 2017-2018).
Grants and awards: Monni has received numerous awards and grants, e.g. Suomi palkinto – Finland state prize from the National Council for Circus and Dance in 1998, state prize for merits in dance for Zodiak Presents ry in 1990, and the five-year state artist grant in 1996, 2002, and 2008.
Research and publications: Monni was granted the Doctoral Degree in Dance at the Theatre Academy in 2004 and the written part of her doctoral thesis was the first extensive theory concerning the ontology of dance to be published in Finnish. In her artistic dissertation, she researched changes in dance paradigms in the 20th century and presented her findings on the new post-metaphysical dance ontology in relation to e.g. Martin Heidegger’s philosophy of existence and the Origin of the work of Art. Monni has published numerous articles on the philosophy and history of dance, and dance artist’s work in different books and publications since the 1990s.
In 2000s, Monni has written and researched especially the expanded notion of choreography (e.g. social choreography, with background in systems theoretical thinking), political dimensions of choreography, dancer's tekhne as a practice of bodily perception and ontology of composition. Recently her interests have been in questions of composition in relation to process ontology (Whitehead) and different representation modes in relation to choreography.
Monni was initiating and founding the Kinesis publication series of dance research in the Theatre Academy and she has been editing it since 2011. By 2017, 8 books have been published in the Kinesis series, out of which five are international publications.
Monni was a member of the Theatre Academy’s Research Council 2009-2017 and she has been a supervisor to several doctoral students in the field of choreography since 2009.
Work at the Theatre Academy of the University of the Arts Helsinki: Monni has been Professor in Dance Art (Choreography) at the Theatre Academy since the beginning of 2009 and is the Head of the Master’s Degree Programme in Choreography. She has also been a member of the Theatre Academy’s board (2010-2012), management group (2013-), Research Council (2009-), Recruitment council 2017-) management group of the Performing Arts Research Centre (2009-2013), Department of Dance’s management group (2009-2013), and publication committee (2009-) Chair 2014-. She is also editor for Kinesis, the Theatre Academy’s publication series on dance. As Professor in Dance at the Theatre Academy, her responsibilities have included renewing and writing the degree requirements of the Master’s Degree Programme in Choreography for the years 2010-2015 and 2016-2020. She has also taken part in the degree requirement work of the BA Degree Programme in Dance and Master’s Degree Programme in Dance Performance.
Monni has been a thesis supervisor to numerous Master’s students, examiner of nearly 30 Master’s theses, and supervisor to four artistic doctoral theses. Monni has also acted as an external assessor in different research, recruitment, and thesis works in other universities in Finland as well as internationally.
Kirsi Monni has had a extensive career in dance; as choreographer, dancer, teacher, researcher, and developer of production structures of contemporary dance. Her list of works includes over 30 contemporary dance pieces with a common denominator of comprehensiveness of means of expression, historical consciousness, and existential philosophical manner. Monni was granted the Doctoral Degree in Dance at the Theatre Academy in 2004 and she has been Professor in Choreography and the head of the Master’s Degree Programme in Choreography at the Theatre Academy since 2009.
Dance studies: Monni studied at the Ballet School of the Finnish National Opera from 1970-1978, she was a scholarship holder at Helsingin tanssiopisto (Helsinki Dance Institute) from 1979-1981. In the 1980s she also took some courses both in Finland and abroad, e.g. at the School for New Dance Development in Amsterdam (SNDO) and at the Theatre Academy’s Adult Education Center in Helsinki. What became meaningful to her after classical ballet techniques are the so called new dance techniques, release technique, contact improvisation, tai chi and Hatha yoga which she has practiced since 1986. Important teachers of new dance techniques have been, e.g., Mary Prestidge and Mary Fulkerson. In the 1990s, Monni studied the Alexander technique for several years, with her teacher Dick Gilbert and, in the 2000s, she studied Deborah Hay’s method of practising bodily perception. These became essential starting points for bodily thinking and meaning creation in choreographic work. Since the 1980s, different psychosomatic meditation practices and Authentic Movement method have deepened her bodily understanding. In 2014, Monni studied to become an Asahi Health instructor under the guidance of Timo Klemola.
Academic Studies: Monni got her Bachelor’s Degree in Dance at the Theatre Academy Helsinki in 1995 and began her doctoral studies in dance in 1996. Her doctoral research was about changes in dance paradigms in the 1900s and drafting an ontology of dance since 1960s. She was granted the Doctoral Degree in Dance in 2004.
Artistic works: Monni’s list of works includes over 30 contemporary dance pieces with a common denominator of comprehensiveness of means of expression, historical consciousness, and existential philosophical manner. In the 1980s and in the beginning of 1990s, Monni was inspired by European experimental theatre, performance art, functional techniques of new dance, and sensitivity and soulfulness of bodily expression in Japanese Butoh dance. In her own work, she aimed to break down, on one hand, the aesthetic idealism reflected by classical ballet in relation to embodiment, and on the other hand, the way dominant modern dance techniques’ were abstracting the movement and structuring the choreographic language. The aim was to broaden the artistic possibilities of dance and to research dance’s relation to world also from the point of view of duration, perception, ritual, and performativity. By slowing down and simplifying the movement and exploring movements lived world-relation, Monni aimed to find sensible grounds for her choreographic language to be based on. Her special aim was to create intricate portrayals of women and humans and broaden the emotional and spiritual area in which dance was operating in Finland.
Her Alexander technique studies, which began in 1994, opened her a way back to a freer motility. The use-of-the self-in-movement-manner was found in the Alexander technique, which was based on kinaesthetic functionality and bodily perception without any ties to specific dance-aesthetic traditions. This made artistic processes free in relation to topic and theme; artistic research questions create each work’s special choreographic language and the way in which movement is structured.
Exploring the movement’s meaning experience and researching both artistic and societal world-relation of dance created a need to understand more deeply the historical contexts of dance and conceptualise artistic aims of contemporary dance. This lead Monni to start reflecting on the philosophy of movement through the publications of the University of Tampere from the beginning of the 1990s and through philosophy of dance through her own artistic doctoral degree in 1996-2004. The five works related to her artistic doctoral degree each reflect the lived world-relation of movement and the ontology of work of art in relation to 20th century dance’s new paradigm, which Monni has defined in her research.
In the beginning of the 2000s, Monni became acquainted with Choreographer-Writer Deborah Hay’s radical idea of dance where the starting point of movement is never a defined form of movement, rather it is perceiving the time-space event of being through bodily movements. “Perception practice” started to form a central starting point to thinking and working on choreographic and compositional structure. Her piece Aikakvartetto (2005) combined the use of different mediums throughout her career in a performance: movement, language and speech, visual imagery and human voice in parallel alongside lighting, sound, and space design, and having bodily perception practice as the starting point for the dancers’ movement. In her 2007 trio piece Friedenplatz, the choreography was formed entirely by a dancer as creative agent in a score structure, where the actual movement was based on bodily perception and bodily thinking, in dialogue with Giacinto Scelsi’s music and fellow dancers.
Monni’s work first as the artistic director of the Zodiak – Center for new dance and then as the Theatre Academy’s professor has taken up her time since 2008. Research, teaching, mentoring, editorial and administrative work have postponed her own artistic work but broadened significantly the views to dance art and artist’s work. Her latest own art work was a project presented in Zodiak Z-free stage in 2015: Violence on Stage – a representation laboratory with choreographer, dancer Joona Halonen and performance designer Mikko Hynninen. Her new work which was a study on the possibilities of choreography to handle the theme of media violence, Acts And Affects, with an ensemble of 6 dancers, was premiered on the Zodiak stage in April 2017.
Work as teacher and lecturer: Monni has worked also a teacher of dance since the 1980s, teaching mostly at the Department of Dance at the Theatre Academy where she has been a choreographer and a fee-based teacher of courses and workshops almost every year since 1987. In all of her teaching, Monni has emphasised understanding of dance techniques from the point of view of bodily-being-in-the world and the need to explore and openly research the movement’s world-relation as both existential and culturally formed matter. Throughout the 2000s, Monni has further developed the relationship of dance and research. She has created and provided extensive study materials for her history and theory lectures and seminars as well as for workshops of composition, improvisation and movement research for the students of dance and other performing arts programmes in BA, MA and Doctoral level.
Monni has been an active lecturer of dance related themes since the 1990s. She has had lectures both in academic and non-academic contexts in different universities, seminars, and events.
Work for the field of dance: Monni is a founding member of Zodiak presents association – a production community of contemporary dance (1986-1996). Zodiak was founded to be an artist-led production umbrella of new dance and an artist community, being a pioneer in this kind of operations model in Finland. Monni was actively part of Zodiak presents from 1986-1996 as a choreographer, dancer, and a member of artistic committee and board. Zodiak – Center for New Dance was formed in 1996 and Monni was actively part in different responsible roles until 2008. She took comprehensively part in developing the activities, artistic committees (chair), board, programme planning, and developing new forms of activity. In years 2006-2007, Monni was Head of artistic committee and Zodiak’s artistic director in 2008. Monni has also been in the artistic board of different festivals, contributing to the programme planning, for example, for the Theatre Academy’s Helsinki Act festival and Zodiak’s Side Step festival. Monni’s academic position of trust was to be a board member of Finnish Society for Aesthetics for 2009-2013. For 2015-2018, Monni is the member the performing arts committee of the Arts Promotion Centre Finland (chair 2017-2018).
Grants and awards: Monni has received numerous awards and grants, e.g. Suomi palkinto – Finland state prize from the National Council for Circus and Dance in 1998, state prize for merits in dance for Zodiak Presents ry in 1990, and the five-year state artist grant in 1996, 2002, and 2008.
Research and publications: Monni was granted the Doctoral Degree in Dance at the Theatre Academy in 2004 and the written part of her doctoral thesis was the first extensive theory concerning the ontology of dance to be published in Finnish. In her artistic dissertation, she researched changes in dance paradigms in the 20th century and presented her findings on the new post-metaphysical dance ontology in relation to e.g. Martin Heidegger’s philosophy of existence and the Origin of the work of Art. Monni has published numerous articles on the philosophy and history of dance, and dance artist’s work in different books and publications since the 1990s.
In 2000s, Monni has written and researched especially the expanded notion of choreography (e.g. social choreography, with background in systems theoretical thinking), political dimensions of choreography, dancer's tekhne as a practice of bodily perception and ontology of composition. Recently her interests have been in questions of composition in relation to process ontology (Whitehead) and different representation modes in relation to choreography.
Monni was initiating and founding the Kinesis publication series of dance research in the Theatre Academy and she has been editing it since 2011. By 2017, 8 books have been published in the Kinesis series, out of which five are international publications.
Monni was a member of the Theatre Academy’s Research Council 2009-2017 and she has been a supervisor to several doctoral students in the field of choreography since 2009.
Work at the Theatre Academy of the University of the Arts Helsinki: Monni has been Professor in Dance Art (Choreography) at the Theatre Academy since the beginning of 2009 and is the Head of the Master’s Degree Programme in Choreography. She has also been a member of the Theatre Academy’s board (2010-2012), management group (2013-), Research Council (2009-), Recruitment council 2017-) management group of the Performing Arts Research Centre (2009-2013), Department of Dance’s management group (2009-2013), and publication committee (2009-) Chair 2014-. She is also editor for Kinesis, the Theatre Academy’s publication series on dance. As Professor in Dance at the Theatre Academy, her responsibilities have included renewing and writing the degree requirements of the Master’s Degree Programme in Choreography for the years 2010-2015 and 2016-2020. She has also taken part in the degree requirement work of the BA Degree Programme in Dance and Master’s Degree Programme in Dance Performance.
Monni has been a thesis supervisor to numerous Master’s students, examiner of nearly 30 Master’s theses, and supervisor to four artistic doctoral theses. Monni has also acted as an external assessor in different research, recruitment, and thesis works in other universities in Finland as well as internationally.