My first visit to fabulous Istanbul was rainy and chilly. Never mind, I fell in love with the fabulous city right away and Blue Mosque turned pink...

Year 2008 started in Bangkok and soon after the night train took me through mysterious Laos.
My aim to photograph in Wat Saket in Vientiane succeeded well. I also visited a sauna in Vientiane, just in the middle of jungle!

The year 2007 started with great moods and new challenging projects.
I am spending January and February as an artist-in residence in Brooklyn.
New York is ideal for making back ground research for my new
multi-platform artwork about major religions of the world.
They are all here!

The very first large photographs from the series titled ”Choosing My
Religion” will be on display at the Stockholm Art Fair in February. The
first exhibition about this theme will take place in October in
Helsinki. I guess it will take me several years to complete the entire
idea, but why not. My themes tend to be larger than life, but
nevertheless I work them out.

During my ”hermitage” in Brooklyn I am writing a book about my work and
ideas. It will be published also in October during the Helsinki Book
Fair, exactly on my 50th birthday. Quite a present!

In the first days in Brooklyn I went to the Botanical Garden, and shot
cherry blossoms (in January!) for my Shinto series. This is the third
time I photograph the very same tree. After hours of working outside I
went to warm up next doors – to the Annie Leibovitz exhibition titled
"Photographer´s Life" at the massive Brooklyn Museum of Art. It surely
warmed me up and gave food for thought for many days… such as
reflecting on how thin a line there is between life and death. As long
I´m on this side of the invisible line, I should appreciate every
moment. After all, I have.

Tired but happy TSC again at the JFK airport. We definetely did it! The press called us "the Finnish dream team" but it was really like that, also behind the stage! We are nine very different characters from various backrounds touring abroad one month together - without a single argument. Thank you Tero, Iiris, Nina, Sini, Henrikki, Heikki, Calle, Ville and Eero. Such a pleasure to work with you.

When we left the Joyce Theatre after seven performances, the good mooded staff of the theatre just waved and yelled "you guys will be soon back"! This was the main message from the press too: the Finnish dream team should be soon back in US and Canada. Below are some reviews of Hunt. Read complete articles at www.terosaarinen.com/blog

Tero Saarinen Company From Finland Dances in New York

The Tero Saarinen Company from Finland made its New York debut in 1998. It was welcomed warmly, but for whatever reason, it took eight years to return. Its opening at the Joyce Theater on Tuesday night was an occasion for some terrific dancing, building happily from strength to strength over the three pieces on the program.....

...None of this would have mattered much without Mr. Saarinen's choreography, which looked constantly alive and original. It was at its very best in the final piece, "Hunt," a 2002 solo for himself. Audaciously set to Stravinsky's "Sacre du Printemps" (in Esa-Pekka Salonen's fleet, intense recording), its overt intentions — something about confronting the depredations of age — mattered less than the eerie atmosphere Mr. Saarinen created. His figure, initially dressed in a white sarong, looked more hunted than hunting. He often moved in spasmodic increments, like a strobe effect without the strobe lighting. That came later, in the equally powerful lighting and projections of Marita Liulia. The second half of the dance found Mr. Saarinen in an alien world of Ms. Liulia's design, with ghostly clouds and faint gray projections on the back wall. The cloud became a skirt or a tutu — Mr. Saarinen as male swan? — onto which were projected vivid, bizarre, swirling, flashing, broken fragments of bodies, above all a recurrent eye. At the very end, he leapt and leapt, each leap caught in midair with a flash of white light.

The whole thing was quite extraordinary, a powerful match for the music. It made one anticipate Mr. Saarinen's date at Jacob's Pillow this summer and fervently hope he makes it back to New York sooner than another eight years.

Lisa Rinehart Dance View Times

A Reluctant Star, Sort Of. . .

Tero Saarinen has kivekset (that's Finnish for hutzpah—in a manner of speaking.) Fortunately, he also has talent and the smarts to choose gifted collaborators. Already recognized internationally as a powerful performer (although I'm afraid he's allowed himself to be described in the program as "one of the most brilliant dancers of his generation"), Saarinen brings to New York a tasting platter of his own choreography....
The star of the evening, however, (and this is where the hutzpah comes in) is unquestionably Saarinen himself in his solo "Hunt," a multimedia tour de force set to nothing less than Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring." Dance history is littered with attempts to realize this magnificent score, but Saarinen is startlingly successful by teaming up with multimedia artist, Marita Liula, as well as costume designer, Erika Turunen, and again, Kunttu. The dance unfolds with the fitful reluctance of early spring and is infused with references to the Diaghilev era. There are bits of Anna Pavovla in "The Dying Swan," as well as archaic positions reminiscent of Nijinsky in his "Afternoon of a Faun." Saarinen has the delicate rawness of a butterfly fresh out of the chrysalis. About midway into the dance, a structure resembling an exploded sheaf of papers fashioned into a tutu descends from the rafters and Saarinen wriggles into it. Mirroring the wild dynamics of Stravinsky's score, Liula's projections begin to flash across skin and dress alike. The images range from hypnotic circular tracings to pulsating collages of barely discernible, but somehow disturbing, objects. Rapid fire editing catches the breath and pulls us into Stravinsky's primal cacophany. If you happen to be a film buff, the net effect is similar to that of the 1929 surrealistic film "Un Chien Andalou," by Salvadore Dali and Luis Bunuel. It's heady stuff and Saarinen summons his considerable strength and feline grace to the task of compressing the miracle of birth, transformation and death into this 40 minute spectacle. The dance culminates with strobe lights repeatedly freezing Saarinen in space (in perfect unity with the score) and ends with the inevitable final collapse. What could be a mess of theatrics is instead an original and stirring visual realization of Stravinsky's emotional intent. Bravo!

Deborah Jowitt, The Village Voice, April 4th, 2006

Siege of Light
Finnish troupe returns after an eight-year absence

Tero Saarinen, the remarkable Finnish choreographer-dancer, isn't the first to choreograph Stravinsky's Rite of Spring as a solo. But he may be the first to internalize the composer's driving rhythms rather than stepping them out, as did Molissa Fenley in her 1988 State of Darkness and Nijinsky's hordes in his 1913 sacrificial ritual. In Hunt, Saarinen's torso and arms map aspirations and assaults. He's not the hunter but the hunted—by the specter of age and death or by the onslaught of contemporary civilization or both. He doesn't attempt to ride Stravinsky's tempest; he endures its pummeling.

His vision owes much to lighting designer Mikki Kunttu; Marita Liulia, who created slides and other multimedia effects; Jacke Kastelli, programmer; and costume designer Erika Turunen. When we first glimpse Saarinen, he is backlit, his outline glowing as he advances unsteadily, dragging around first one foot, then the other. He's bare chested and wears a white skirt. His only onstage audience is a semicircle of lamps set on the floor.

Watching Saarinen in Hunt, you might not guess he was once a soloist in the Finnish National Ballet (although that company's repertory is eclectic and contemporary). You might, however, deduce that he studied butoh in Japan with Kazuo Ohno. He performs the first part of Hunt as if listening for a call, his body arching, his arms outspread. There are echoes of Fokine's Dying Swan in his attempts to rise from the floor, but his "wings" are often distorted and pulled painfully far behind him.

I think we did it right from the beginning. After Westward ho! the audience thought this is something strange and unusual. During the sensual Wavelenghts they decided they liked it, and at the end of Hunt they just caught their breath and went silent. After Tero´s last leap toward the skies (or death) it was so quiet I could hear my own heart beat. Then the emotional storm of the audience broke the death silence. The reviews of the next days repeated the Canadian pattern, often with the invitation, please come back soon! We certainly will.

New York Times about Hunt:
The whole thing was quite extraordinary, a powerful match for the music. After two days, they also ranked the performance among the three MUST´s of NY at the moment.

Read the reviews from www.terosaarinen.com/blog

At the Joyce Theatre little is left of it´s past history. This former porn cinema has been the main venue of modern dance in New York for a long time. It´s nice to work there with 60 professionals who have staff meetings every day! Tonights New York premiere, and the seven performances to follow, added with the discussions with the audience and journalists make us feel, as the Finnish expression goes, like having butterflies in our bellies. During the coming days I will also lecture at Parsons School for Design and New York University. Great honour and a pleasure! Art is
communication...

My favourite DJ Dimitri from Paris happened to be in town! His first record, Sacre Bleu, is already a classic, and I have never succeeded to be on the spot when he plays. Dimitri seems to have released a new double CD, called In the House of Love. This time I will not miss the gig. And I have two days off before the performances begin at Joyce.

I blackmailed our youngsters Nina, Eero and Ville to forget GDGB, the black smoky hole of punky rock, and join me at Pacha. Its a year old sophisticated night club in the Meat Packing District in Chelsea. I made a holy promise to visit GDGB later on with them, but had my fingers crossed… naughty me.

Mr. Dimitri really made us move our meats, and when we packed ourselves again to a yellow cab, we were all in a great mood and it was very late or very early… the most attractive hours of New York.

This winter Finnish evening papers do not write headlines about Karita Mattila´s outfit on stage, because she´s dressed up as a young soldier lad in Fidelio. Despite the male costume I can immediately recognize her by The Voice. It flies freely above the other voices, strong, clear and rich of colours. She is a great artist, not just an opera singer but also an actress and a dancer. I still regret I didn´t take a flight to New York just to see her performance in Salome last winter.

When I closed my eyes in the narrow seat of the Metropolitan Opera I remember the last time I heard this magnificent voice. I woke up at home an early summer morning. Tuija Hakkila, then my neighbour and a great pianist, had rehearsals with Karita Mattila for their summer concerts in Finland. I opened all the eleven windows of the apartment and enjoyed three days of an unusual concert.

The Metropolitan Opera is a gorgeous building, especially inside. The portrait and art collections are beautiful, and the excellent store is a delight for any visitor. I wonder why our opera in Helsinki does not sell anything, and looks like a government office with some boring official art works hung on bare walls. These days the news are about their bad financial situation…But perhaps we have something better in Helsinki; Fidelio´s lighting-, set- and costume designs lacked ideas, were gloomy and uninteresting.

They have funny rules in the house: we should wear yellow helmets and special boots when we work behind the stage. Exactly at midday, a few minutes before the end, they stop our dress rehearsal and tell us the theatre has to pay a huge penalty if they don´t obey the union rules. Poor Tero, who has to start the rehearsal all over again after an hour. He never complains, just thanks the technicians and tries to keep his muscles warm for one hour more. This dream team seem to share a general Zen attitude, which brings much better results than any yelling or egoism.

The performance was one of our best, and at the end the whole audience was standing, which has become kind of a rule with us. Some disappeared crying to the lobby. In the public discussion after the show they openly addressed emotions raised by issues of the evening; humanity, loneliness, friendship, love and sacrifice.

The technology I use in Hunt is often the first question I get. I reply by telling the story about a bug my long time programmer, Jacke Kastelli, found in Macromedia Director, the software which we later decided to use in Hunt. The result is not video, but an interactive animation tool. I use it to I paint / shoot at Tero´s body with his own images in real time.

I like to see every performance, and every night I discover something new. This art form is always different, and I realize it better when I see the same work again and again. The audience too impacts the performance, and they are very different in every country. The extremes must be the noisy and emotional Italians and French, versus the quiet and reserved Japanese and Finns. Canadian are somewhere in between.

After the show the happy and tired bunch of performers enjoyed a heavy and hearty meal in a Scottish pub. One plate of cheesecake was enough for four! Photos are taken by Iiris Autio, our managing director. She joined us in Ottawa, and a few minutes before the performance she hugged me telling how much she loves her profession and this team.

After the show The Finnish Embassy has organized a reception, and we will stay one more day in Ottawa before flying to New York. A similar reception was organized during my last visit here, and it was also exceptional;informal, popular, and besides having fun I met remarkable professionals and got many reasons to visit Ottawa again. Well done, Embassy!

The early morning was rainy and grey but I was enthusiastic. What a special light for photography! On the way I shoot some Toronto skycrapers disappearing to mist. That was just an aperitif. When we arrived to Niagara with the rented Pointiac we were just like a bunch of schoolkids, screaming of delight.

Niagara was so mighty, magnificent and mysterious. How lucky am I, a few weeks ago I was in in Angkor and now in Niagara! When I sat there in front of the screaming, sighting Falls, I felt the same way than the day I started this blog in the ruins of Angkor. I felt connected with my inner peace when I saw the masses of water moving. Besides the water views I took again some photos of trees dancing in a mysterious mist. The mist makes colors disappear, everything look like black and white film.

Saarinen's alchemy spins pure gold

Reader be warned. This review is going to gush. The gushee in question is Finland's Tero Saarinen Company, which is making its long overdue Canadian debut. If the opposite of Eurotrash is Eurogold, this outstanding contemporary dance troupe is a precious metal indeed.

To create that all-important first impression, Saarinen has brought three of his signature works, and each is a gem in its own right. But the evening is more than three wonderfully provocative dance pieces. Equally impressive is how Saarinen has structured the program. The build, from one dance to the next in terms of mood and impact, is architectural perfection. The other exceptional component is the design element as manifested in Mikki Kunttu's rapturous lighting and the gorgeous originality of Erika Turunen's costumes.

Completing this Finnish dream team is multimedia artist Marita Liulia, whose contribution to Saarinen's famous solo Hunt is simply breathtaking.

This time pure gold made in Finland is not ice hockey but modern dance!