Marika Peura is a choreographer, dancer and performer based in Helsinki, Finland. She works multidisciplinary in the fields of dance & performance. Peura is interested in the emotional, poetic and political nature that unfolds from the experientiality of the body. Her ongoing practice is centered around the intimacy of the dancing body; dwelling in the emotional, sensual and social energies in the intersection of club/rave dance & culture and contemporary choreography.
Peuras’ dance background is in street & club dance culture; freestyle hip hop being closest to her heart. This is reflected in her artistic practice and the relation to bodily movement. She did her institutional dance and choreography studies in Uniarts Helsinki, graduating from the Choreography MA program in 2020, and BA in contemporary dance in 2017. The BA studies included an Erasmus year at HZT's Dance, Context, Choreography program.
In November 2023 Peura and her working partner Kaisa Nieminen were rewarded with a prize ‘Future of Culture’ by the Finnish Culture Gala. Peuras’ recent works as a choreographer include collaborations down below things shudder (2023), and then they left (2021), Guess What? Guess what! (2022 & 2021), Shall we have a drink before I start to cry (2020), Philia (2019) and solo work Sirkka Pukoilija (2017). She has worked as a dancer in works by Maija Hirvanen (FI), Joona Halonen (FI), Petri Kekoni (FI), Janina Rajakangas (FI), Reija Wäre (FI), Samir Akika (DZA/FR), Branch Nebula (AUS) and Wang / Ramirez (DE/FR).
In her upcoming work Marika Peura is researching and re-imagining the question of (physical) intimacy in the relationship with her mother. Through this personal framework unraveling questions of asian heritage, 3rd culture kid experience, white supremacy and the agency and power of brown immigrant women in the context of Finland.
Amalgam melee is a duet between Marika and her Philippine mother; it contemplates the presence and impacts of misogyny, patriarchy and colonialism in the question of intimacy in the daughter-mother relationship.
The piece will premiere in September 2024 on Zodiak Stage.
