Ashla: Underdogs is a dance performance that moves through astonishment, exhaustion, and addiction — tracing how invisible violence reshapes the body, leaving it without character and endlessly narrating. Echoing the body’s repetition and fatigue under overstimulation, the piece asks how contemporary bodies — caught between numbness and intensity — become uninhabitable.

Working Group:

Direction & dramaturgy: Homa Shokri
Scenography: Anni Hernetkoski
Light design: Katinka Ebbe
Sound design: Jekaterina Viltšenko
Choreography: Noon MA
Performing: Sonjis Laine, Chen Nadler, Sointu Saraste, Homa Shokri
Producing: Aliisa Kattelus
Teaser, photos: Darina Rodionova

Supported by Koneen Säätiö, Teater Viirus

August 2025
Helsinki

 The performance investigates how fantasy, techno-inspired movement, and collective bodily scores emerge as responses to unseen structures of fear and control. 

Working Group:

Direction and Dramaturgy: Homa Shokri
Choreography: Noon MA
Sound Design: Logane Rime
Light Design: Oskari Kaarne
Performing:  Sonjis Laine, Sointu Saraste, Chen Nadler 
Visual storyboard: Shima Anjidani
Voice Narration: Mitra Matouf
Supported By: Kone Foundation


Photo: Camilla Hanhirova

April 2025
Mad House- Helsinki

Blurring the Boundaries is a multimedia, interactive installation and performance that transforms personal narrative into a choose-your-own-adventure experience. The work invites participants to step into a fictional protest, guided by a Game Master who simulates the power structures of an authoritarian system while holding space for the hope of freedom. Each participant must decide how to protest, balancing instinct, strategy, and reflection on what truly matters in the pursuit of liberation.

Working Group: 

Concept and Design:  Paria Mohajerani
Video Designer: Homa Shokri
Sound Designer:  Logane Rime

 
An experimental video project composed of recorded video footage and archival photographs, presented as part of a Dance-Music performance in Helsinki. The visuals were edited live during the performance.

We meticulously observed a document, distorted its essence to suit our desires, and ultimately obliterated it, both the physical body and its narrative. 
 Now, in the act of recreation, we find ourselves recollecting what we attempted to recall previously. The images and violence that once consumed us are now blurred, allowing for a fresh remembrance. 
Now you will witness the unfolding of our recollections, both as they truly occurred and as we wish to construct them. The essence of the body slips away before your eyes. 
As a passive observer, You watch the images flit through your eyes. 
A realm where nothing burdens your senses, and nothing grazes your skin, nothing touches your eyes. 
Witness the echoes of violence, all without disturbance! 

This performance draws inspiration from political documents in Iran. We did not seek to portray an accurate representation of Iran's political landscape. The stories depicted were not bound by strict truths or falsehoods; instead, they served as a reflection of broader experiences. 

Working group

Direction and Cinematography: Homa Shokri 

Writing: Farhan Sonboldel 

Dramaturgy: Birgitte Maaike Feddersen 

Lighting and Video design: Oskari Kaarne 

Scenography: Kristian Schmidt 

Sound design: Hulda Hjálmarsdóttir 

Costume and mask design: Riitta Sinkkonen-Saarela 

Performing: Kadence Neil , Paria Mohajerani 

Photo: Jere Aalto

We were nameless, weightless bodies – countless and small. 
We fit anywhere, but some were pushed aside, tossed, or lost. 
Fragments remained, visible. Clay-like, we molded to places, targets for sharp things. 
Muted mouths, feet stuck to roads. Our story: adapting, fading, echoing. 
 
Encased within a private space, akin to a secluded box, participants are granted an opportunity to connect intimately with themselves in the midst of a bustling public setting. In this experience, people have a chance to connect with themselves in a private setting within  public areas, or to simply walk away. In this experiment, we are actively investigating various locations for placing the box. Each participant is afforded a moment of solitude within a public setting, where they can engage with the video contained within the box, fostering a deeply personal connection with their own self. 
How connected are we as individuals in public? This performance is designed to give you the experience of confronting yourself where we do not expect. 
 

12.09.2023, Helsinki University, Metro Station
Fri 22.09.2023, Theatre Academy, Uniarts Helsinki

Working Group:

Directing and Writing: Homa Shokri
Sound Design: Pilar Miralles
Performing: Edit Williams, Pablo Ounaskari, Ladapha Tangmo Sophonkunkit

2023
Helsinki, Kristiansand, Tehran

 This is a long video that depicts daily life in Helsinki, interwoven with recorded and actual voices from Iran during the 2022 Woman, Life, Freedom movement. It also highlights various personal experiences of violence and oppression.

Working Group
Director: Homa Shokri
Sound Design: Pilar Miralles

• Pianist: Salar Nikkar 

2023
Helsinki
A contemporary music-theater in collaboration between Sibelius Academy and Theater Academy .

Working Group
Director/Librettist: Homa Shokri
Composer: Pilar Miralles
Voice: Aleksiina Turtiainen
Voice: Yolanda Harding
Accordionist: Sabina Aftyka
Cellist: Eliso Babuadze
Pianist: Kiryl Bartashevich
Percussion: Pilar Miralles 

2023

 Svenska Teatern Helsinki

This project was a collaboration between the Swedish theatre, Uniarts Helsinki and Aalto university. 
 The project was based on the neo-Dadaist manifesto in which it is indicated how we can escape from reality and return to it in seven different theses. The theses are presented by three Dadaist Max, Åsa and Sofia. The theses are depicted in augmented/virtual reality for the audience to experience new dimension of reality through VR glasses. The frame of the work was a meeting to which the audience are invited. The performance began as an ordinary meeting down in the Svenska theatre entrance, but afterwards turning into a sensory journey through theories and phenomena that were manifested by actors (neo-Dadaists). At the beginning of the performance, the different senses are explored through iPads and VR glasses and some images are projected on the transparent fabrics around the audience. 

worked as : Dramaturg/assistant

 2022
Helsinki

As a manner of creating a common experience in a different place and time, I used the political events that happened recently in Iran to indicate a link with the theme of my performance. So, I used the theme of bodily disobedience in my artistic process. As it was exactly related to the current situation in Iran.  I wanted to explore to what extent a performance could build mutual sensations between performers and the audience and how could different cultural dimensions be considered. So, I used the contemporary performative standpoint as a reference for my performance theme which says; How do I experience and interface the word. 
 I wrote a text based on actual stories in Iran and then I turned them into questions. Also, I used real photos in the events for the visual effect on the stage. I left the arrangement of the stage and the position of the camera and TV unchanged as my previous plan. So, I collected the voices from people with different nationalities and edited them into one audio file. While I was collecting the voices, I tried to look for videos of protesters in Iran and separate the audio from the videos and add them to the main audio file. 

Displacement

2022
Collaborative Project 
(Croatia, Cyprus, Iran)

It is difficult to explain what a body does and what is done to a body. All bodies are in a cycle of producing, being produced and becoming.  The private relationships between people in their homes are somehow related to the outside of their homes. In fact, the main source in shaping human relations in private spheres lies in the public sphere. But what defines the boundary between humans inside a common place and humans outside it? Human living space, whether it is a home or a larger place like a land, gives its members identity and its members are subjects rather than objects. The entry of a stranger into an area with certain people disrupts the order.

2022
Worked as: Director/Editor

This is  the public performance based on the bodily presence of performers and its connection with the audience.
I collected some narrations of different people and their relationship with the concept of ‘home’ whether as a private space or a land, country or whatever we call home.
I used the UN refugee agency website and I read actual refugee stories and chose some of dialogues. In addition, I used the book ‘home, a very short introduction’ by Michael Aalen fox as a reference.
The contexts of sentences are universal for all people and the reason that the faces of performers are obscure is that they write these narrations as socio-political bodies. Therefore, every individual as a political body among other bodies emerges from their private realm and acts in the society. It is this presence of bodies that forms events in societies.