Sonja Jokiniemi

Sonja Jokiniemi is a dance and performance artist born in Kuopio. She has a bachelor’s degree in dance from the Laban Centre in London, and has since lived and worked in England, Ireland, Finland, and most recently, in the Netherlands. In the summer of 2013, Sonja graduated a Master of Theatre from the DasArts institute in Amsterdam.

‘Although my creative process centres on choreography, the form my works take and the tools I use vary from drawing and mapping practices to working with miniature landscapes or studying the relationships between objects, materials and people. Physicality is an important starting point for my work as it acts as a foundation for forming language. Through my artistic practices, I have developed ways of studying the processes of forming meaning and purpose through physical rituals.

At the Saari Residence, I will be working on two new projects, which currently go by their working titles: HMM and Without an Alphabet. HMM will lead to a performance work in 2014. I will collaborate with a work group on this project later on in the spring. Without an Alphabet is a collaborative project and a new way of working for me. I will be working with people who are specialists in their own language systems. I am interested in expanding the definitions of language as well as in the study of language as an approach to the relationship between the individual and the world.’