Ghosts of Rosegarden, to be premiered on 6th October at Dance House Helsinki, is a big stage piece for seven dancers and five musicians by Finnish-Carelian interdisciplinary dance artist Elina Pirinen whose creations are known for female-specifically doomy and excessive, ritualistic, boisterous, mysterious, humorous, queer-psychic, neo-romantic, and primitive folklore core.
As playful source of Pirinen’s vast performance and Ville Kabrell’s composition is a creative dialogue between works of classical music and stage librettos in which women/girls are sacrificed, murdered, enchanted into fairy-tale creatures, imprisoned, abducted, or otherwise meet a harsh and unfair end. Pirinen writes a new libretto to Kabrell’s new composition and together, they create a contemporary feministic fairytale.
Ghosts of Rosegarden takes speed from Stravinsky’s iconic “The Rite of Spring”, but instead of making yet another version of the original narrative, no female is killed here. Instead, these women and girls are reborn again and again in different forms – as dancing, music playing, reciting vitality, flesh and blood, free spirit alter egos, symbols of life, masters of ceremony, and new icons. They change the writing of history, kill the misogynistic focus caused by ultimate jealousy towards the gender who can birth, and deal with the surviving female-specific core of artistic expression across the ages.
Ghosts of Rosegarden is divided into three different parts and landscapes: a rosegarden, the grave under it and one peculiar houseparty. In a hybrid matrix of neo-primitive dance, recognizable and unheimlich characteristics, visceral storytelling recital through growling and singing, mysteriously formidable live film as a corporeal cinema operated by the performers, all is transported by a vast “forces of nature-kind” composition with strings, bassoon, bells and electronics played live by avantgarde chamber orchestra Avanti! from Helsinki.
In Co-production with: Zodiak – Center for New Dance (Finland), Sõltumatu Tantsu Lava Tallinn (Estonia), Dansens Hus Stockholm (Sweden), BIT Teatergarasjen Bergen (Norway) and Avanti! chamber orchestra. Supported by: Arts Council Finland, Jane and Aatos Erkko Foundation, Jenny and Antti Wihuri Foundation, New Classics Fund, Erasmus+, Nordic Culture Point. Residency support: English Estonian Embassy in Helsinki, Estonian Ministry of Culture.