It took several years’ planning for us to get our schedules matched. HUNT was finally presented yesterday, in the Festival’s 7th edition as part of our full Stravinsky Evening. The beautiful Opera House – from the same era as The Rite itself – served as a perfect frame for this unforgettable event.

The performance was followed by an interesting and highly rewarding talk with the audience and also meetings with local dance scene. Tero held a master class the day before the performance which had dancers not only from Poznan but also from Warsaw. Even though the economic situation in Poland is not easy, there is a real hunger for contemporary dance and there are young talents to be followed. We wish to come back soon!

Last night’s show was actually our Triple Bill’s national premiere! Though Tero’s work has been seen here a lot via NDT1, our company has in fact toured quite rarely in The Netherlands. It would indeed be nice to come back in the near future…

This time our performance was part of Schrit_tmacher Festival, an interesting combination of events organized in two different cities - Heerlen and Aachen - in two countries. It was also interesting to familiarise ourselves with Theater Heerlen’s well-organized facilities for touring: the venue features three different stages with about 500-600 different programs running every year. That’s quite a task logistics-wise, but luckily the local crew was on top of things and everything went well from the very beginning!

For Tero Saarinen Company related tips, visit out Event Calendar: the first dates from our spring season 2012 have been recentely published. In addition to Company performances in Europe and the US, this season’s highlights include Tero’s Mariage, to be seen at the Finnish National Opera in May, as well as Tero’s masterclasses in Helsinki next month.

PS. Join our Facebook-group or subscribe to our newsletter if you want to keep in touch and be among the first to know our news!

As for this tour in our home country, we cannot properly express how incredibly heart-warming the audience response has been. We’ve heard stories of people travelling as much as 280 km (!) to see us, listened to exceptionally insightful comments and questions from fans and first-time-dance-spectators alike and, in general, just felt so very welcome in the packed houses we’ve performed at in all cities.

It seems very clear to us that there would definitely be a continuous audience - for us and for dance in general - all over Finland, should companies’ national touring become more common. So, we sincerely hope that as planned, this tour will serve as a door-opener for similar tours in the future!

For us, it’s now time to wrap things up and take a well deserved holiday break before 2012 comes forth with new challenges and possibilities! Happy holidays everyone!

Right now it’s less than three hours until the final show of our Blossom & Decay tour, to be presented by Jyväskylä City Theatre in central Finland. It will be exciting to see the new combination: tonight, Tero will be performing his Rite of Spring interpretation HUNT instead of Man in a Room…

Fact is also that this historic - our company’s first ever - tour of Finnish City Theatres would not have happened without the help and determination of local City Theatre Director Lasse Lindeman and the Regional Dance Center of Eastern Finland. So a big thumbs up and thanks to them - as well as the local crew who has made us feel very welcome and in general done a great job!

Last night’s performance went great and showtime for the second Blossom & Decay evening is in just three hours. Looks like the house will be packed tonight also so we’re really looking forward to our next encounter with this enthusiastic eastern audience - and to be truthful, also the upcoming end of the tour next week. It’s been quite a season this one, with two premieres and constant tours…

Yesterday Blossom & Decay was seen in Oulu, near Lapland. After a week on our pittoresque home stage in Helsinki, it was fascinating to see Absent Presence on a larger scale stage – and to hear the responses of our northern audiences! In the audience discussion we learned that people had traveled to see us even from “neighboring cities” located some 220 kilometers away…This is a promising start and shows that dance has a great audience in our own country. We genuinely hope that this will only be the beginning and many similar tours will follow, bringing a wide variety of dance to all parts of Finland!

The thunderous applause, the feedback in the post performance audience disucssions, emails, this blog and our Facebook-group’s wall has been stupefying. What can we say but thank you all!! It’s a priviledge to get to do this job. And it’s always so special to get to perform at home.

If you want to comment, please don’t hesitate to post your thoughts here, visit our Facebook group for further discussion or send us an email.

We’re very excited to have our season’s second world premiere here at our home stage, the Alexander Theatre in Helsinki. As the dress rehearsal and photo shoot draw near, our cast & crew’s mood is tingling! Looks like the house will be absolutely packed, which is always exciting too…

The evening features a solo performed by Tero (in Helsinki, Man in a Room) and his newest creation Absent Presence, a choreography for seven dancers.

We’ll report back soon and as always, Flickr is the place to visit for some backstage snapshots…

Luckily everything has gone extremely well. The Borrowed Light performances at Concertgebouw Brugge and Théâtre de Caen were superb, thanks to exceptionally good stages and top professional crews of both venues. It has been nice to realize there is a real, long-term following to our work, and Tero Saarinen Company has true fans also outside of Finland!