Studio Sharing: Damnat [Work-in-progress]
Teo Ala-Ruona & collaborators, Damnat (work-in-progress) 2026. Performance, photo by Alana Proosa.
Studio Sharing: Damnat [Work-in-progress]
by Teo Ala-Ruona
Presented in Partnership with Movement Research, the Finnish Cultural Institute in New York
and Zodiak - Center for New Dance
Monday, November 23
7-8pm
150 First Avenue
New York NY 10009
In this studio sharing, Teo Ala-Ruona presents a work-in-progress performance of Damnat together with performer Mina Tomic. The large-scale stage work, which Ala-Ruona is developing with his collaborators, will premiere in 2027 at Zodiak – Center for New Dance in Helsinki.
The presentation brings together selected excerpts from the work’s emerging choreographic and performative material, alongside text.
Damnat examines the classificatory powers exerted over the body, focusing on language as a violent regulatory force, governing the body - inside out. Damnat stages a headless body attempting to escape language, only to confront the absurdity of its own existence. It constructs a world in which the body is held under scrutiny and expected to speak the right words that explain itself to the other, in service of the social order. The title refers to Saint Dymphna, also known as Damnat, who is revered as the patron saint of those experiencing mental and emotional distress. According to legend, she was beheaded by her father after refusing to marry him. Her body thus became a site of refusal against patriarchal power and violence.
You are welcome to attend the sharing and stay for a short feedback session afterwards. The work is still in development, and all forms of audience feedback are valuable and helpful at this stage of the process.
More information about the artist and Damnat:
https://www.instagram.com/teoalaruona/
Teo Ala-Ruona is a Helsinki-based performance artist, working across dance, choreography, contemporary theatre, and visual arts. Rooted in embodied practicing and theory, his art seeks embodied metaphysical transformation on somatic, psychic and social registers. In his work, trans embodiment operates as a conceptual framework through which he critically examines societal conceptions of the body. He uses the performing body as a site of re-negotiating pregiven categories, and explores how alternative stage realities can challenge normative understandings of bodily limits. Ala-Ruona works with deep performer’s craft and carefully crafted audience engagement. He celebrates the absurd, the transgressive and the impure in his work and life.
Teo Ala-Ruona’s residency occurs in partnership with the Finnish Cultural Institute in New York and the Finnish Cultural Foundation.
