Can a new beginning emerge from the threat of destruction, and how is it found?

Writing of Disaster is a choreographic melodrama and post-farce where destruction and life go hand in hand, creating expressive cracks between joy and tragedy. Three experienced performers—Jenni-Elina von Bagh together with Hanna Raiskinmäki and Jyrki Karttunen—explore the comedy of failure: the fringes of our existence and the dark spot, posthuman forces, the delicious balance of horror and laughter. They draw from the body’s own wandering, eventful journey, born of impractical, ridiculous, and self-imposed challenges. Writing of Disaster constantly finds new ways to express itself, to get tangled up, to fall, and to pull itself together again—to reflect on the wonder of life, on the fact that we are alive.

The work is an artistic adaptation of Maurice Blanchot’s philosophical work The Writing of the Disaster.

Jenni-Elina von Bagh is a choreographer, dancer and curator. During 2023–2025 she was the artistic director of Zodiak­ – Center for New Dance. She is inspired by philosophical themes and their resonance in the world. Her main research examines the non-human paradigm in performance art, focusing on the human body’s expressive power as a compositional element. She is interested in the eventfulness of contemporary performance, where the interfaces of humor and tragedy meet, creating their own language in the world. She has created works for Zodiak – Center for New Dance, Side Step Festival, Moving in November, Caisa, Teater Viirus, Ehkä-production & Contemporary Art Space Kutomo, Finnish National Theatre, New York Living Theatre, Brut Wien, and MDT Stockholm, among others. Her most recent works include Quattro Stagioni (in collaboration with Elina Pirinen and Tom Rejström, 2025), Everything is right before (a shortfilm in collaboration with Anna Antsalo and Hanna Raiskinmäki, 2025), Extramaterial (2024), As time goes by (2023), Void – A Psychodrama (2022), A Prologue (2020), Posthuman days (2018), and A Life – a nomadic melodrama (2017). For decades, she has worked internationally as a performer with choreographers such as Kenneth Kvarnström, Deborah Hay, Örjan Andersson, Josef Fruzeck, Linda Kapetanea, Ina Christel Johannesen, Helena Franzén, Ikuyo Kuroda, and Jyrki Karttunen—and, in recent years, Elina Pirinen. She was a member of Helsinki Dance Company from 2006 to 2015. She graduated from the Dance University of Stockholm in 2000, and from the Theatre Academy in University of the Arts Helsinki with a master’s degree in choreography in 2018. She works through and has founded the multidisciplinary art community Open ended.