Performances: ArkDes, Stockholm, 2025
Play Overlay is a dance for the unnameable self that, in everyday life, is translated into roles through the act of coding ourselves with clothing. It is a solo performance by Teo Ala-Ruona and the working group, asking how our everyday roles can be shaped, slip away, and be shed?
The choreography explores the friction between the body’s internal experience and the layers of clothing on top. Each garment that is removed, and each part of the body that is revealed, invites the audience to examine the ways in which we project categories upon others. Clothing is central to Play Overlay, here framed as a technology that can be applied and discarded, layer by layer.
Undressing roles becomes a moment of collective attention and renegotiating assigned categories. The performance seeks to uncover clothing’s ability to shape the body – both architecturally and symbolically. Eventually, the audience becomes part of a shared gesture of dressing and undressing, a collective play of decoding through clothes.
Trailer: https://vimeo.com/manage/videos/1139070843
Concept, direction, performance: Teo Ala-Ruona
Choreography: Pauliina Sjöberg
Sound design: Tuukka Haapakorpi
Costume design: Ervin Latimer
Production: Sanna Ritvanen
Commissioned: ArkDes in collaboration with MDT as part of Worldglimpsing: Roleplay and Design of Alternate Realities
Supported by: Zodiak: Center For New Dance, Frame Contemporary Art Finland and Arts Promotion Centre Finland