Choreography

After Acceptance (2021)

After Acceptance was commissioned as part of Step Up 10th anniversary and What Next festival 2021. The work looks at different stages of grief in a form of a solo performance choreographed on dancer Millie Daniel-Dempsey. The piece describes an ambitious goal, an end sight of a mourning process of grief. It points out to a place or a state, which materialises after coming to terms with a deeply impacting event. Whether it is brought upon by a profound change, a personal loss, an end of something or someone, it has the power to cast an all-encompassing shadow. The performance examines the different qualities of grief as well as their physical manifestations. At times it stands quietly, completely still in a corner staring back at oneself. Other times it bursts out in silent screams, wrenching the limbs unexpectedly. It may weigh one down as if the body liquifies and slips through floor-boards. Solace can emerge from the smallest of details.

Choreography: Aliina Lindroos in collaboration with Millie Daniel-Dempsey
Dance and performance: Millie Daniel-Dempsey
Lighting design: Gearoid O hAllmhurain
Set: Aliina Lindroos

Phantasmagoria (2018)

'Phantasmagoria' dictionary definition: a sequence of real or imaginary images like that seen in a dream. Phantasmagoria is a marriage between dance and light derived from imagery and aesthetics of eerie in-between place filled with ghostly characters and lingering presence of other. It also combines elements of performance with installation. Through the visuals and choreography the piece deals with physical manifestations of memories, dreams and traumas which our bodies restore in most intricate ways. Consequently it looks at how these elements manifest in our physical behaviour.

Performed in Dance House June 2018 as part of New Movements
Initial development: Aliina Lindroos, Mihaela Griveva and Valentina Lops
Choreography: Aliina Lindroos
Dancers: Millie Daniel-Dempsey, Mia DiChiaro, Mintesinot Getachew, Mihaela Griveva, Aliina Lindroos and Valentina Lops
Light and installation: Helen MacMahon

Supported by Dance Ireland, Tipperary Dance Platform and Fringe Lab

Photo © Helen MacMahon

Hood (2017)

Theatrical dance. Original music. Grimm's fairytales. Faust. A unique mesh of expressive, interdisciplinary storytelling is what to expect from this poignant contemporary dance show. Deviance from tradition is necessary in our modern world, but still makes us subject to scorn and judgement from the very society that we need in order to function. Where do we draw the line between individualism and collectivism? Hood is a contemporary dance piece with some classical elements of ballet, co-created with a dancer-choreographer Assi Pakkanen and composer Andrea Guterres. With completely original music it takes the audience through a modern adaptation of a mash-up of two beloved German stories: Faust and Little Red Cap (Grimm’s Little Red Riding Hood). It examines the place and relevance of tradition in our society through themes of temptation, love, judgement, feminism, and taboo. In 2018 the piece will be developed into children's dance theatre.

Choreography: Aliina Lindroos and Assi Pakkanen
Dancers: Aliina Lindroos and Assi Pakkanen
Music: Andrea Guterres

Photo © Turlach O Broin

LAUTA (2017)

Aliina Lindroos (Finland) and Susie Yugler (USA) grew up five years apart, in different countries across the Atlantic. One thing amongst others they have in common is at young age they were both called “lauta” (or ironing board, i.e. “she’s flat as a board [lauta]!”). Working formally as choreographers, the artists have devised an interdisciplinary performance that aims to understand how childhood heartbreak, trauma, and loss echoes in the body. What adolescent events, personally and politically, shape performances of gender as 20-somethings? Through a series of staged, recorded, and candid conversations with one other, they’ll further investigate and problematize their roles in society as white western women. Together they question the notion of girlhood and identity. LAUTA takes viewers on a trip through the hysterical joys and melancholia of girlhood. The work offers a glimpse of the dreamy world where a girl's potential and aspirations have yet to be squandered by the realities of patriarchal society. Through a series of interviews, the two artists will dissect, celebrate, and interrogate the various ways in which their different cultures and childhoods, informed their sense of identity.

Choreography: Aliina Lindroos and Susie Yugler
Dancers: Aliina Lindroos and Susie Yugler

Photo © Alexandra Salvaterri

Landing (2016 - to present)

Landing Collective (Aliina Lindroos and Moran Been-noon) is an ongoing collaborative project between a visual artist creating moving image work, and a choreographer - dancer acting as an embodiment of the muse/monster that is the acculturation subject matter. Landing launched with three live performances and a week long installation in Eight Gallery, Dublin Dec 2016. Since then Landing Collective has been featured in various exhibitions, performed and presented work in following context:

Home Is Where? at Lahti Fringe Festival, Finland, 2018
Foreign Tides: Eye’s Walk Festival, Ermoupolis Syros, Greece 2018
Artist Residency @ Draíocht Arts Centre, Dublin, 2018
Livestock MART gallery, Dublin 2018
Alkaline Osmosis: PLATFORM’18 @ Draiocht, Dublin, 2018
The Land Wants Me Here: Emerge/ncy @ Galerie Mausefalle, Berlin, Germany 2018
Can You Hear The Birds From The Water? Joint Effort II, Lubbock, TX, USA 2017
Landing Channel 1: Platform Arts Members Show, Belfast, 2016
Landing launch: Eight Gallery, Dublin, 2016

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Elegy of Hallatar (2013)

A solo dance work initially developed as part of Dance Theatre Creating Space programme. The word 'Hallatar' derives from a Finnish word of 'halla', meaning frost. 'Hallatar' itself is a feminised personification term used in Finnish poetry and mythology such as Kalevala. The winter in Finland lasts averagely 150 days. This solo is an exploration of the melancholy of autumn, the wordless grief of summer coming to its end. The nature prepares to end an cycle - as the winter approaches the body slows down and gets ready for another dark and cold period. What are the defences of our bodily systems that winter brings up? Nature functions as never ending stream of cycles, so therefore there is always a beam of light in the darkness as there is always spring after winter.

Choreography: Aliina Lindroos
Dancer: Aliina Lindroos
Music and soundscape: Luke Farrell

Gender - The Longest Performance Of Your Life (2013)

We shape our bodies according to the physical objectives we are assigned to. Walking, sitting, tone of talking, posture, standing, laughter, facial expressions – all these physical actions which we do not even necessarily pay attention consciously while executing them, are part of our gendered bodies. While body is also the ultimate nexus of gender, it is also inseparable to dance for obvious reasons. As the body is the main signifying system, therefore the concept of gender has cast a long term effect on dance. Ultimately the piece aims to analyse to what extent gender is conditioned behaviour, 'a little show' that we put on. Society's enforcement of rigid patriarchal gender roles happens throughout our lives - it defines society's social expectations and failing to meet such expectations have consequences.

The piece investigates such enforcement via medium of dance theatre and explores how the borders of gender duality may be blurred in contemporary dance. Dance functions as a vehicle to highlight gendered gestures and physical behaviour – it then deconstructs gender appropriateness/gender-specific and plays around movement and gender-neutrality. Practically speaking the piece combines contemporary dance theatre with original electronic soundscape, animated projections and specific type of costume. It moves from problematic scenarios (childhood, work, marriage, parenthood) finally into utopian finale in which the dancers finally dance together as a group, in unison but also in supportive manner as if the negative separative facets of gender are eventually stripped away.

Choreography: Aliina Lindroos
Dancers: Conor Donelan, Hugo Lau, Olwyn Lyons and Yvonne Hegarty
Music and soundscape: Luke Farrell
Animation and projection: Maisie McNeice
Costume: Laura Gilsenan