Fine Art Photographer, Visual Artist, Butoh Dancer and Teacher, Health Qigong Instructor
Osku Leinonen is a freelance artist based in Tampere, Finland. He is a versatile trainer and stage artist who specializes in applied theatre. At heart, Leinonen is a Butoh dancer and instructor. He shares this humane and intriguing form of performance, especially in Finland, where it remains relatively unknown. He also has a background in physical theatre.
In his photography, Leinonen explores image-making as a contemplative and artistic practice that merges movement, stillness, and memory. Through self-portraits, small landscapes, and abstract impressions, he creates images that balance clarity and mystery. Each piece is a visual poem: an invitation to pause, reflect, and rediscover beauty in the overlooked moments of life.
Education & Early Training
Physical Theatre Foundation
Leinonen gained his physical theatre training at The Mime Centre’s Total Theatre Training program in Helsinki in 2004–2005. The program was run by Adam Darius and Kazimir Kolesnik. He was also a private student of Adam Darius for several years, and he practiced acrobatics at Circus Helsinki for several years.
Academic Background
Leinonen earned his Bachelor’s Degree in Social Services in 2000. Alongside his artistic pursuits, he then worked part-time at orphanages and juvenile homes. He also holds a Bachelor of Culture and Arts. Performance art and social work have become permanently intertwined, each supporting and enriching the other. For Leinonen, both fields come down to encountering people, interacting with them, and deepening one’s knowledge of oneself.
Professional Performance & Theatre Work
PerformanceSirkus (2002–2008)
From 2002 to 2008, Leinonen worked with PerformanceSirkus, a multi-artistic professional theatre group. He was immersed in street theatre, mask theatre, contemporary mime, children’s theatre, drama pedagogy, and circus theatre. The group specialized in street theatre, a rare phenomenon in Finland. Besides performing, Leinonen handled directing and production and trained new performers.
Butoh Training & Performance
Leinonen was introduced to Butoh dance in 2007. In early 2008, he began training and performing with the St. Petersburg-based Odddance Theatre, in Russia and Finland. He worked with Natalia Zhestovskaya and Grigory Glazunov. His understanding of Butoh has been inspired by Masaki Iwana, Katsura Kan, Atsushi Takenouchi, Aki Suzuki, and Ken Mai.
In 2009, Leinonen and visual artist Masha Salangina founded the independent professional theatre group butoh.name Mythopoetic Theatre, later renamed MO Theatre. The duo performed in numerous shows and short films in Finland and Russia.
Teaching Philosophy
Leinonen began teaching Butoh soon after discovering it. Butoh felt close to what he had been seeking through his own experiments and experience. It also matched what he already considered essential when performing and training others. Butoh has sharpened his understanding of the principles of movement, especially the inner movement of the body. It has also made the equality and simultaneity of body, mind, time, energy, and space more approachable.
In 2012 Leinonen wrote a thesis on Butoh, introducing the concept of the Art of Integrity (Finnish: Hyvän taide). The thesis title in English would be roughly “Butoh: A Person’s Journey Toward the Art of the Good”.
“Over the years, I neared my notion or, perhaps even type, of slow acrobatics, which in hindsight, bears many resemblances to Butoh: I strive to efface the doer, that strange me, and the act. With slowness, I try to melt away shape so that the technical execution of movements, the trick itself, ceases to exist. I try to dissociate myself from performing and being watched and move towards just being and the occurrence of the moment, thereby combining experience and intention. I aimed towards not-self in the art and the act, so the interaction, the connection with the audience, their world, and life story, would be as clear and unpredictable as possible.” — Osku Leinonen, 2012, thesis Butoh, ihmisen matka kohti Hyvän taidetta (Metropolia University of Applied Sciences)
Butoh and Qigong: Practicing the Art of Integrity
Leinonen trained as a Health Qigong instructor in the Jian Shen Qigong instructor training of the Finnish Health Qigong Association (Suomen Terveys Qigong -liitto) in 2014–2016.
Butoh and Qigong complement each other fruitfully. Butoh dance grows from no-form toward form, and Qigong shapes form toward no-form. Their shared aim is an optimal body, one reachable in one’s present life situation, and a whole, healing self. The dimensions of wholeness include energy balance, well-being, a balanced life, and harmony.
The Art of Integrity (in Finnish, Hyvän taide) is a concept created by Leinonen. It describes art, artistic experience, and practice that can have an integrating, healing effect on both the maker and the one who experiences. “Good” here does not mean moral niceness. It means acceptance: of one’s own life, of oneself, and of impermanence. Butoh dance, Qigong, and photography meet in this art. The aim is a purified moment of the good: suchness appearing in its many forms.
Art, and the training of body and mind, should encourage a person toward their potential: a happy, whole, experiential, and aesthetic-ethical life. Most central are presence and the skill of listening, so that our ability to perceive what is can grow.
Current Work
Photography has been Leinonen’s primary form of expression since 2019. Since 2021 he has worked as an instructor for people with developmental disabilities, and this work has taken hold of him. Alongside this deeply rewarding and important everyday work, he has led movement exercises, such as Qigong and Butoh-based imagery exercises, as well as theatre techniques, and carried out photography projects. The work continues and keeps developing.
