Tero Saarinen

Tero Saarinen has had a distinguished international career both as a dancer and a choreographer. He has made more than 40 creations, for Tero Saarinen Company and other prominent dance groups.

Nederlands Dans Theater (NDT1), the Batsheva Dance Company (Israel), Ballet Gullbenkian (Portugal), the ballets of Lyon, Lorraine and Marseille (France), the Gothenburg Opera Ballet (Sweden), the National Dance Company of Korea (South Korea), the Finnish National Ballet, and many others have featured Saarinen’s works in their repertoires. His key works for Tero Saarinen Company include the company’s international breakthrough Westward Ho! (1996), Saarinen’s Stravinsky reinterpretations Petrushka (2001) and HUNT (2002), the Shaker-inspired Borrowed Light (2004), Morphed (2014) set to music by Esa-Pekka Salonen and Jean Sibelius’ Kullervo (2015) in collaboration with the Finnish National Opera and Ballet.

As a choreographer Saarinen is known for his unique movement language, ’an inventive mixture of grotesqueness and beauty’ that plays with balance, and off-balance. Saarinen teaches TERO Technique, which fuses elements from his backgrounds in ballet, contemporary dance, and a wide range of Asian traditions. His internationally acclaimed choreographies have often been described as total artworks. Saarinen has received numerous acknowledgements of his work as an artist, both in Finland and abroad.