<img src="http://www.terosaarinen.com/images/WESTW!.jpg" alt="" />
<small>WESTWARD HO!; koreografia: Tero Saarinen; photo: Shiri Slavin</small>

Company Toothpick from Finland have changed their name to TERO SAARINEN COMPANY, after their founder and choreographer.

They are one of the most well known Scandinavian modern dance companies and Saarinen is in demand to choreograph for other companies now.

<img src="http://www.terosaarinen.com/images/PETRU2.jpg" alt="" />
<small>PETRUSHKA; choreography: Tero Saarinen; photo: Tanja Ahola</small>

I have only seen them once in London and their "Petrushka" with a fabulous arrangement for 2 accordians was the highlight for me. We have various reviews of their London visit here.

They also have a new website with much to admire. This is a company where the visual aspect is very important so it's not a surprise that their website and the images there look great.

<small>[ 11 March 2004, 09:43 AM: Message edited by: Stuart Sweeney ]</small>

One of Europe's leading choreographers of the moment and his Company go on an extensive international tour:

*************************************

Press release

Tero Saarinen Company's tour schedule for summer and fall 2003



Our summer season starts from Moscow: The International Chekhov Theatre

Festival features Kaze - a joint production of Tero Saarinen Company and Japanese

musician Yas-Kaz and his ensemble. Five performances of this large-scale work

will take place in Gorky Art Theatre in May 22-26.



TSC will also tour actively in Finland's numerous summer festivals: you are welcome to

join us either in Kuopio Dance Festival, Full Moon Dance Festival,

Kuhmo Chamber Music Festival or Turku Music Festival.

You might also catch us from Ludwigsburg, Uzès, Bolzano, Kalamata

or St. Petersburg...



Please visit our website - you will find there more information

of the works and also the downloadable photographs.

For direct links click repertoire or press images:

www.terosaarinen.com



We are looking forward to meeting you somewhere on the road!



TOUR SCHEDULE

May - October 2003



<img src="http://www.terosaarinen.com/images/kazesini2.jpg" alt="" />

<small>KAZE Photo by: Graziano Arici</small>



KAZE May 22 Gorky Art Theatre, Chekhov Festival Moscow, Russia



KAZE May 23 Gorky Art Theatre, Chekhov Festival Moscow, Russia



KAZE May 24 Gorky Art Theatre, Chekhov Festival Moscow, Russia



KAZE May 25 Gorky Art Theatre, Chekhov Festival Moscow, Russia



KAZE May 26 Gorky Art Theatre, Chekhov Festival Moscow, Russia






<img src="http://www.terosaarinen.com/images/hunt7.jpg" alt="" />
<small> HUNT photo by Marita Liulia</small>







HUNT Jun 16 Kuopio Dance Festival Kuopio, Finland



HUNT Jun 21 Festival de la nouvelle danse Uzès, France



Man in a Room/ Jun 24 Ludwigsburger Schlossfestspiele Ludwigsburg, Germany

HUNT







<img src="http://www.terosaarinen.com/images/QEH-Tristram.jpg" alt="" />
<small>Petrushka photo by Tristram Kenton</small>

Petrushka Jul 16 Kuhmo Chamber Music Festival Kuhmo, Finland



Petrushka Jul 17 Kuhmo Chamber Music Festival Kuhmo, Finland



Man in a Room/ Jul 21 Nuovo Teatro Comunale di Bolzano Bolzano, Italy

Petrushka



HUNT Jul 24 Kalamata International Dance Festival Kalamata, Greece



HUNT Jul 25 Kalamata International Dance Festival Kalamata, Greece



HUNT Jul 30 Full Moon Dance Festival Pyhäjärvi, Finland








<img src="http://www.terosaarinen.com/images/gaspard.jpg" alt="" />
<small>Gaspard photo by Marita Liulia</small>



Petrushka/ Aug 12 Turku Music Festival Turku, Finland

HUNT





Petrushka/ Sep 10 Aleksandrinsky Theatre St. Petersburg, Russia

HUNT Visit Festival





Gaspard / Oct 18 Octobre en Normandie Festival Rouen, France

Wavelengths





Man in a Room/ Oct 29 The Suzanne Dellal Centre Tel Aviv, Israel

HUNT DancEuropa Festival



Man in a Room/ Oct 30 The Suzanne Dellal Centre Tel Aviv, Israel

HUNT DancEuropa Festival



Man in a Room/ Oct 31 The Suzanne Dellal Centre Tel Aviv, Israel

HUNT DancEuropa Festival

<small>[ 19 May 2003, 06:54 AM: Message edited by: Stuart Sweeney ]</small>

<img src="http://www.terosaarinen.com/images/Gaspard4.jpg" alt="" />
<small>Gaspard, photo: Sakari Viika</small>

Press Release

March 2004


Dear Friend,
We are happy to inform you about changes in our status and management: from this year on, Tero Saarinen Company is subsidised according to Finland's Theatre and Orchestra Act, which is a big change compared to the past years' small, project-based grants. This year we will receive 113 000 euros as a state subsidy, and this sum should increase in the coming years. Tero himself has been awarded a five-year working grant from the Arts Council of Finland, and this will also help us to invest in the Company's development.

Still one more piece of good news comes from the City of Helsinki: TSC has taken up residency at The Alexander Theatre, the former Opera House of Finland. Our rehearsal studio, office and storage area are now located in the same building, and we are also able to use theatre's stage for small-scale performances and technical rehearsals for the upcoming premiers.

New members in the Company
Thanks to all these changes, we have been able to engage a number of key personnel: Henrikki Heikkilä, who has been dancing with Tero in many productions since 1996, resigned his permanent contract at The Finnish National Ballet and has joined us as a dancer, Tero's assistant and a repetitor of the repertoire. Sini Länsivuori continues with us as a dancer and now also as a teacher and Tero's assistant. Eero Auvinen has worked as our technical director since last autumn. Producer Suvi Virtanen started her full-time job dealing with our tour management, productions and public relations in January.
All other Company members, including the other dancers, musicians and our lighting designer Mikki Kunttu, will continue to work with us on production-based contracts.

Borrowed Light and the ritual essence of dance
The Company's next premiere Borrowed Light will take place in Le Havre, France, on October 8 this year. Tero cites the ritual essence of dance, a dedication to work and community and minimalistic aesthetics as the key elements in this work, which draws its inspiration from the revolutionary Shaker movement of the 17th and 18th century.

The piece features eight dancers, while the lighting design is by Mikki Kunttu, and the costumes are by Erika Turunen. The music will be perfomed live by one of the world's most renowed old music ensembles, The Boston Camerata, under the direction of Joel Cohen. Borrowed Light is being produced in collaboration with the Octobre en Normandie and Kuopio Dance Festivals.

International movimentos Dance prize for Tero as the "Best Male Performer"
The jury of the first International movimentos Dance Prize 2004 has chosen Tero as the winner of the "best male perfomer" category. Other award winners are Alina Cojocaru (best female performer), Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui's Foi (best choreography), Akram Khan and Mourad Merzouki (newcomers) and Maurice Béjart (lifetime achievement). The prizes will be awarded during a gala celebration on May 26th 2004, prior to the international dance festival Movimentos in Wolfsburg. Tero will dance his solo work HUNT in the gala, which will be broadcast by ARTE and 3sat.

Looking for The Captain in Marseille
Meanwhile, Tero continues working for other companies as well. Gaspard is touring with the Lyon Opera Ballet while the duet Could you take some of my weight...? is in the repertoire of the Ballet de Lorraine.

Tero's next creation The Captain should have been premiered today (March 11) at Ballet National de Marseille, but the performance has been cancelled due to the Company's internal crisis. Ballet Director Marie-Claude Pietragalla resigned her contract last week, and the Ballet together with the venue, Théâtre de la Criée, decided on Tuesday to postpone Tero's premiere until next season.

Contacts and more information
Please note, that you can find our updated tour schedule, downloadable photographs, the latest news and other useful information from our website www.terosaarinen.com.


I hope to meet you soon - somewhere on the road!
With best wishes,
Iiris Autio

********************
Managing Director
TERO SAARINEN COMPANY
The Alexander Theatre
Bulevardi 23-27
00180 Helsinki
Finland
Tel/Fax: +358 9 681 31881
Gsm: +358 40 589 2400
iiris.autio@terosaarinen.com
www.terosaarinen.com

The light fantastic
By Rose Jennings for The Observer

Finnish dancer-choreographer Tero Saarinen first came to prominence as a soloist dancing at the Finnish National Ballet. But he didn't stick around long enough to pick up the plaudits. In the early Nineties, he left Finland to spend time working and studying with dance teachers in Japan and Nepal. He finally set up his own company in 1996 and since then has built up a wide following.

Fans - not all them women - speak breathlessly of Saarinen's 'body mastery'. Colleagues appreciate his consistency; he keeps his team in work. Journalists like the fact that he collaborates across a range of disciplines and is curious about other art forms.

click for more

The Tero Saarinen Company was in Italy last night, they performed 'Borrowed Light' and I found it a very elegant and refined piece, not much claustrophobic as Judith Mackrell points out. In particular the body articulation of the dancers combined with the use of lighting was impressive. I will soon talk more extensively about it.

Check also the Civitanova Danza Winter Season 2004-2005 file under Dance Miscellany.

THE LIGHT OF COMMUNITY
Tero Saarinen Company
"Borrowed Light", Teatro Rossini, Civitanova Marche, Italy, 9th April 2005, h 9 pm

"The worshipers all turned their backs to the audience…and commenced a backward and forward march" wrote Benson Lossing in 1857. He was an artist who had the chance to eyewitness a typical Shakers' dance and who decided to report it in Harper's magazine. The Shakers were a religious sect born in England in the early 18th century. They fully established themselves as a group once they moved to the United States where their unusual ritual dance developed. Tero Saarinen studied the Shakers for years and, with "Borrowed Light", he created a profoundly spiritual piece where the 'back-manner' dancing recurs together with dance phrases charcterised by a hard-stepping onto the floor.

Tero Saarinen's dance is a dance where everyday movements become poetic body expressions. In one of his earlier pieces, "Could you take some of my weight…?", the sense of gravity is expressed as a feathery principle, the stepping is carefully and delicately done, while in "Borrowed Light" it becomes a heavy burden. This is in line with Saarinen's interpretation of the Shakers as a movement where the sense of community and equality is quite strong. In this sense, the heavy stepping of the dancers' back and forward walking, when done in unison, highlights the bond between the members of the community.

The piece begins in darkness and darkness constitutes a main feature of the whole work as the mainly black and beautifully forged costumes by Erika Turunen also underline. The use of lighting is fundamental and it is architecturally employed by Mikki Kunttu. For example a lateral floodlight placed in the front part of the stage recurrently focuses on some solo pieces respectively by Carl Knif and Maria Nurmela. Some floodlights are placed in the front part of the stage and they create a surreal game of shadows in the backgroud when the dancers move together all connected via their arms. The use of lighting is also important as a metaphor for God, the highest principle in Christian faith. Furthermore, the expression 'borrowed light' was used by the Shakers with reference to thier houses where a system of internal windows allowed them to literally borrow the natural light to maximise its function in their huoses.

Another structural apsect of this piece is the music, characterised by the original Shakers songs, performed live by six members of the Boston Camerata. The singers are not separated from the choreographic arrangement devised by Saarinen, they mainly stay on the large black steps surrounding the stage where the dancers sometimes go, and they also move together with the whole company as in one of the final pieces, where they become the centre of a ritualistic circle around which the dancers move. The Civitanova Danza audience was caught by the distinctive aura of this complex piece. Moreover so, if we consider that Saarinen had presented its prototype last Summer in the small Annibal Caro Theatre in the up part of the town. this was in occasion of the two weeks residence of the company in the town of Enrico Ceccheti. There and then the bones of the choreography were already visible suc as the duets between the different members of the community, the group work and the horizontal use of space.

"Borrowed Light" is a carefully constructed piece where all the elements of the performance perfectly fuse together to express the energy and vitality of a community. Echoes are there to refer to the Shakers community, however no trace of their fanatism is perpetrated, only their love and respect for each other. As the result of a large joined project between the Civitanova Danza Festival in Italy, the Kuopio Dance Festival in Finland and the Octobre en Normandie Festival in France, with the support of the European Community, the Finnish Ministry of Education, the Finnish National Council for Dance and the Florence Gould Foundation, "Borrowed Light" is a rare pearl of refined quality.