Mortal Tropical Dances is a peculiarly, romantically, lustfully, painfully and ecstatically danced, sung, played and prayed contemporary, symphonic, feministic, ritualistic feast by choreographer-music maker Elina Pirinen and her fellow artists.  

Mortal Tropical Dances focuses on the concept of ceremonies by dancing, playing, singing, and praying out energy, sex, hope, madness, joy, suffering, humor, imagination, warmth, and comfort. It is a peculiar work – sometimes romantic, sometimes painful, sometimes ecstatically and ritualistic – performed by seven international dancers and accompanied by a live Renaissance chorus and the energetic music composition full of different layers, doom guitars, strings, electronics, bells, and percussion by composer Ville Kabrell.

Together with the transformative architectures of the ceremonials of the bodies and live music, the visual stage also travels between temperatures, smells, colors, paints, smokes, fluids and solid matter. The volume of the work blurs the line between the subject and the object proposing an intersubjective caress. How to share and receive life forces?  

Elina´s work aims to create counterforces of subconscious heat in today´s world dominated by a depressing and fearful zeitgeist. The more alive, fearless, wilder, and wider the canvas of the stage is, the easier it is for us all to reflect ourselves on it and open new doors to imaginative worlds.

Duration: 75 minutes

Co- produced by Zodiak- Center for New Dance, Dance House Helsinki, Libidian Wonders and Carte Blanche in collaboration with the Nordic Next Network. Supported by Arts Promotion Centre Finland, Nordic Culture Point, Finnish Cultural Foundation.

Premiere 5 May 2023 at Erkko Hall, Dance House Helsinki, Finland

Brume de Mer is a stage sonata performed by a virtous ensemble of five female dancers. It consists of the sheer volume produced by the combined abstraction of psycho-neurologically rich ring dance, lyrical field sung with peculiar beauty, scents, intoxicating colors and an intense organ composition.

Brume de Mer fumbles for, deforms and reforms ancient and new expressions for desire, obsession, mutism, killing and intuition in an extremely physical way. This feast for all the senses invites the body to exit the body and mental processes spill out from the corpus, moving back and forth in free association. The act tries to blur the line between the subject and the object, proposing one kind of intersubjectivity and collective subconscious.

The sonant stage consist of a tremendous original organ composition by Ville Kabrell, which has eaten alive the original idea of using Sonata no. 2 for Organ by Russian modernist composer Viktor Suslin. The performance is a self-standing instalment of Pirinen’s series of works based on Russian compositions. For the artists of the workgroup, Brume de Mer is a delightful and novel comeback.

Duration: 70 minutes

A production by Zodiak – Brand New Dance, Moving in November festival, MDT Stockholm, Elina Pirinen. Residencies at O Espaço do Tempo (Montemor-o-Novo), ZIL Culture Center (Moscow), Hellerau (Dresden). With the support of Arts Promotion Center Finland, the Jenny and Antti Wihuri Foundation, the Finnish Cultural Foundation, the Swedish Cultural Foundation in Finland, [DNA] Departures and Arrivals. Co-financed by the European Union’s Creative Europe programme. 

Premiere 29.8.2018 at MDT Stockholm.