Project Description
Paper Bodies is a contemporary circus work that examines the threshold between the body and death through minimalist visuality and movement. The piece asks what happens to the body and the meanings attached to it at the moment of death and beyond. The title Paper Bodies refers to the body’s transience and to the stories that life inscribes upon it. The work investigates the boundary between the living and the dying body and delves into the process of accepting death.
Paper Bodies addresses one of humanity’s deepest fears: what happens to the body and soul after death? Death touches all of us, yet it remains difficult to approach. Religions, philosophy and storytelling traditions have long sought to ease this fear, surrounding death with rituals and mysticism. This work seeks to create its own ritual for accepting the inevitable and for imagining what might lie beyond it. It explores the significance of the dying body and constructs a narrative about death, so that we may remember to live.
Paper Bodies will premiere in Finland in August 2026.
Produced by Cirque Bono.
Director–Choreographer: Minna Tikkanen
Composer–Musician: Vesa Virtanen
Performers: Hermanni Ahomies, Liina Pietiläinen, Helmi Pirkola, Jeannette Rönkkö and Vesa Virtanen
Photos: Elias Goller
