Stockholm-based choreographer and dancer Virpi Pahkinen’s works are full of secrets; she can be a warrior of the spirit, a spectral gardener, or a shaman in metamorphosis. She offers dance as an incantation and creates a meditative atmosphere with her original choreography. She is well known for her stunningly chiseled shapes and almost otherworldly moves.
In this performance, Pahkinen will showcase solos from her latest productions as well as show clips from her latest dance films.
Following the performance there will be a conversation with Virpi Pahkinen.
About Virpi Pahkinen
Virpi Pahkinen is a Finnish choreographer and dancer. She has been successfully touring the world in her dual role as choreographer and solo dancer and her performances have received critical acclaim in over 45 countries including the United States, Australia, Mexico, South Africa, and Lebanon. She studied piano at the Conservatory in Helsinki, and trained in choreography at the University College of Dance in Stockholm from 1989-1992.
Pahkinen has also created works for several companies such as Ballet Poznanski, Vietnamese National Opera Ballet, North 59°, The Young Dance Company and Finnish Opera Ballet among others.
Apart from making performances for the stage, she has choreographed and appeared in numerous dance films. Her latest dance films Arbor and Sahara premiered in 2013 and have been presented at several international dance film festivals.
Pahkinen’s musicality and her interest in light as architecture has attracted artists of the highest quality and she has collaborated with such artists as the lighting designer Jens Sethzman, the composer Akemi Ishijima, and musicians like Jon Rose (violin) and Sussan Deyhim (vocals).
In 2001, at the International Solo Dance Theatre Festival in Stuttgart, Pahkinen won the 1st Choreography Prize with her solo Prayer of the Scorpio. In 2002 she was awarded the Carina Ari Foundation Gold Medal.
In 1996, Pahkinen was awarded Finland’s Culture Prize for young artists and the Svenska Dagbladet Opera Prize.
The Swedish Section of the International Association of Theatre Critics awarded the 2009 Dance Prize, remarking, “Pahkinen is one of Swedish dance’s most unique artists. In her solo work she creates her own universe through her vibrant musicality and sense of form. Her distinct and extremely flexible gestalt seems at times to have crawled out from the dry waves of a vast desert, at other times to be a transparent membrane of cosmic power.”
Pahkinen has taken part as a dancer in several of famous theatre director Ingmar Bergman’s productions at the Royal Dramatic Theatre in Stockholm, including The Bacchae, Peer Gynt, Goldberg Variations, Space and Time, A Winter’s Tale and Ghostsonata.
In 2009 Atena Kustannus published Pahkinen’s debut book Käärmeensyöjá (Snake eater). The daily newspaper Keskisuomalainen wrote, “The wild freedom of Snake eater’s details and the poetic visions of its prose are a source of both power and levity.” In 2013 the book was published by MBM Förlag in Sweden.
In 2011 Pahkinen was awarded the Swedish royal medal Litteris et Artibus, for her outstanding artistic contributions as a dancer and choreographer. Recently she was awarded the City of Stockholm’s Cullberg Prize 2014.
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Image by Mattias Lindbäck
SAT- 1-16-16 – 2 PM
free