Tero Saarinen Company Blog

This season has been quite a ride and everyone is really looking forward to some time off…so things will slow down here but there are still some interesting plans for the summer also.

At the moment, Tero is preparing to leave for France where he will spend a few weeks rehearsing Carolyn Carlson’s legendary solo Blue Lady – to be performed in Lyon this fall.

In the end of July Sini and Henrikki will start working in Sweden, rehearsing Tero’s duet Could you take some of my weight…? into Norrdans’s repertoire.

Our own season 2008/2009 kicks off August 27th with the Finnish premiere of Next of Kin. After the three-week performance period Helsinki, the piece will be seen at Biennale de la danse de Lyon in September and The Joyce Theatre in New York as well as other cities in the US during October-November. See our Event Calendar for performance details.

Tero Saarinen Company ended its spring season in Valenciennes last week-end. Feelings are quite high at the moment because the past year will go down in our company’s history for many reasons.

Rave reviews and an enthusiastic audience response followed a record 41 performances during season 07/08 – many of which took place in the world’s leading venues such as BAM’s Howard Gilman Opera House in New York, the Châtelet Theatre in Paris and Southbank Centre’s Queen Elizabeth Hall in London.

The season also saw the world premiere of Next of Kin, our first tour in Oseania and a record breaking amount of performances in Finland. Our total number of spectators exceeded 27 000 in 10 countries.

In addition to our own performances, Tero’s works were also licensed to other companies; Gaspard was given to the Göteborg Ballet in Sweden and Mariage, commissioned by CNN - Ballet de Lorraine and Opera National de Lorraine, received its world premiere.

If that wasn’t enough to keep our team busy, we also continued planning our movie project and held workshops and master classes in Russia, New Zealand and Finland.

Most of us have been exploring London in the sunshine this morning before heading to the theatre for rehearsals…

On that note, it has been exciting to see how the aspired artistic vision has become so alive. Next of Kin is technically very challenging so along with the local crew, Tero, Mikki, Eero, Ville, Marco and Heikki had to work very hard again to ensure every tiny detail is working as it should on a completely different stage than that of the premiere. In the end we noticed that Next of Kin fits well to Queen Elisabeth Hall; the closeness of the stage to the audience really complements the vibe of the performance.

But, due to the work’s complexity, there are also many tiny details that can go wrong. For example, the laser screen has already been sown back together after ripping a little yesterday…well, it’s fixed now and it didn’t effect the performance so “no worries” as we learned to say in Australia…

Jarmo and the dancers gave an amazing performance with incredible energy tonight - despite the fact that some of the performers are suffering a bit from the flu….and the audience responded accordingly - what a great welcome from London! The reviews aren’t out yet but we’re keeping our fingers crossed - although we know that the work is such a special experience that it will divide opinions and arouse discussions…

The evening continued at the rooftop terrace of the Royal Festival Hall at an event hosted by the Embassy of Finland, the Finnish Institute and Southbank Centre. Our sincere thanks go out to everyone involved, it was a privilege to celebrate our performance in this way! After enjoying the cocktail party honored by the Finnish Ambassador Jaakko Laajava, we enjoyed a table full of Asian food and some drinks at a restaurant nearby with our friends from the Institute.

After a quick Stravinsky Evening gig in France last week-end, Tero Saarinen Company has landed in London. The team is currently hard at work preparing for perfromances of Next of Kin at Southbank Centre’s Queen Elisabeth Hall taking place today and tomorrow. Everyone’s excited because London is such a key city for dance - it’s is always such a pleasure and an honor to perform here…

London also holds a special place in our hearts because it has played such a key role in Tero’s career as a choreographer: the performances of Westward Ho! at the Place Theatre’s first Aerowaves season in 1997 can be called his international break-through. Since then we’ve had the privilege to perform here many times, most recently with Borrowed Light in 2005. It’s good to be back again!

The world premiere of Next of Kin was yesterday and our hearts are filled with several feelings. About two years after the start of the artistic process, suddenly the performance has been born and feelings of joy, emptyness, relief, disbelief, tiredness - and many others remain.

The audience gave a warm welcome in the full house, although we are sure opinioins of the piece will vary. Next of Kin really is like a surrealistic dream and is not easily defined. Dance, music and visuality together create something one of a kind, a piece of art that is not easily categorized.

Like always, the process will also continue: the premiere was just the beginning of the trip. It will be interesting to see how Next of Kin will evolve in the future. Next stop: London (May 23-24).

Right now most of the team is already back in Finland, resting after a night of celebration with our Lithuanian friends.

Our marketing and communications manager Terhi stayed behind and gave a short speech today at the Kedja seminar. She will continue expoloring Vilnius and the festival & seminar programmes for a few days.

Finalizing a piece of this magnitude takes a lot of hard work. Putting all the pieces – dance, live music, lighting, costumes, wig&make up, surround sound design and other technical issues, production details – together is a huge challenge.

Everyone – including the very helpful and professional local festival staff – has been working around the clock for the past few days. The dancers are sore from rehearsals and everyone else is just sleep deprived after the long days – but it’s all starting to pay off; slowly but surely the final artistic vision is coming alive onstage at the nostalgic Lithuanian National Drama Theatre.

The premiere of Tero’s new creation, Next of Kin, is closing in…The Tero Saarinen Company team has been working hard for several days now in Vilnius, the beautiful capital city of Lithuania.

The piece, partly co-produced by the Lithuanian Dance Information Centre and the Vilnius – European Capital of Culture 2009 organisation, will receive its world premiere on Friday, May 9^th. The performance is also part of the International Contemporary Dance Festival New Baltic Dance 2008, held during the Kedja 1^st Dance Encounter seminar.

Visit Flickr for some backstage atmosphere and views of the lush city of Vilnius!

Saturday’s show had a full house again. We had some technical challenges with the smoke in HUNT but judging from the audience response - even more excited than Friday - nobody noticed. Despite some tiredness after a long week and one of our team members falling down with a bad flu, we can honestly report that Paris was a pleasure! In addition to the great audience, our thanks go out to the very professional staff of Châtelet, our Embassy and the 100% Finlande team. We can’t wait to return: we’ll be performing our own Stravinsky Evening in Nanterre in the middle of May.