THE SHANGRI-LA SUMMER SHOW, THE 5th EDTION

I made a poster and next week I am putting up a show - come go bananas with us, our co-performers and our students at The Shangri-La Summer Show 2019!

About 1/3 of the tickets are left, get yours from our webshop via tiny.cc/SUMMERSHOW2019

APRIL FOOLS & RUBIES KLUBIT

Entertainment-tip for this weekend:

April Fools Burlesque in Pikku Hanhi in Lahti and our RubiesKlubit: Hikiklubi at Sture 21 in Helsinki tomorrow! Come join the fun!

SUMMER CELEBRATIONS: THE SHANGRI-LA SUMMER SHOW JUNE 8!

If you want more sparkle in your life, and even if you don't, but just want to have fun and be entertained, come watch our studio's Summer Show Friday June 8th at Sture 21!
Coming to a show is always a win-win -  you have a great time and help put bread on the performers' tables. Plus get your daily/weekly/monhtly dose of sparkle and (biogradable) glitter.

It is already the 5th summer show we organize, and as usual we feature both students and teachers as well as resident Shangri-La performers. And a lot of other fun stuff! It's a bigger show than our regular clubs, and we turn the madness down a little bit (just a little) when hosting.

Find out more on the event page, and get your tickets from our webshop here: Summer Show tickets.

Also, a small reminder that I have created a discount code for my blog readers to our studio which gives -15% off pretty much everything - also summer show tickets! We have several summer classes and courses coming up in June as well so have a look at our studio's webpage (still only in Finnish I am afraid, although we do teach some classes in a multilingual style Finnish-English-Swedish).

The special only-for-you-discount to our webshop is FREELANCERS15

BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY

Waiting for November then!

Queen was the first band I was an actual fan of! I did my first presentation ever in school about the band. My mom helped me put it together. That was a terribly long time ago already.

Biopics like these can either be a hit or miss (and sometimes going back and forth between either one), but lets hope this one is good! So far I like how the song mix for the trailer is made, so lets make that a god sign.

Ze interwebz told me the movie has a campaign where you can sing Bohemian Rhapsody karaoke-style with your phone and perhaps get your voice in the films (guessing ending credits?) and apart from the looking-for-a-shot-talented-singers I keep thinking of the thousands and thousands of terrible ones that have to, just have to (forbidden karaoke songs: immigrant song by Led Zeppelin or Bohemian Rhapsody) happen. And that somebody has to listen trough. Give me half a bottle of red and a late night and I'm in! (No, please don't).

SUPERWOOD

Today I am traveling to Strasbourg to perform at a festival (at Elsass Rock & Jive) in warm and sunny weather!

So, logically I thought I’d look back some six months ago to to a very different kind of season, festival and ambience - Paola Suhonen’s SuperWood Festival.

The very first Superwood took place late last October just east of the Helsinki city centre in a now hotel, then 1960’s bank conference building; Hotel Rantapuisto. In all it’s 60’s design glory is a prefect base for the event, which, as one would expect when created by Paola Suhonen / Ivana Helsinki, mixes music, art, design and Finnish nature.

It’s a rather grown up festival, in a good way, with nice dining and movie screenings - forget muddy fields and tents, and enjoy lounge bar concerts with a living room feeling design hotel rooms - with a twist of spooky woodland vibe:
(Photo credits at the end of the post)

I only attended the first night but immediately regretted not booking the whole weekend. I managed to miss my old pal’s Suad’s sunset concert opening the night (Finland, October, it sets early) but got to listen to a truly magical Mikko Joensuu auditorium set, and then join the wood tour, which Paola put together of different musical performances and installations in the woods surrounding the hotel. A super idea although a bit over crowded, but let’s see how they do it this year.

The hotel restaurant had put together a vegetarian buffet of which lots of the ingredients were picked from the backyard -like sugar coated lichen decorating the dessert. And Pekka Haavisto (Finnish presidential candidate) was DJing! I ate so much I had to lounge on a pile of cushions to get over my food coma while watching one of the feature films.

Looking forward to this upcoming autumn to see how the second year of the festival will turn out!

Photos from the Superwood FB page by
1. Aleksi Tikkala - 2 & 5. David Jakob - 3. Tero Kiiski - 4. Mira Lintunen - 6 & 7. Paula Hiipakka

Square instagram photos by me except photo of Pekka Haavisto from @pekka.haavisto

WONDERLAND

Tonight! At our studio starting 18hrs - Dr.Sketchy's Helsinki presents: Wonderland! Come and draw and enjoy the nice setting, music and atmosphere.

Photo by Neil Kendall.

DR.SKETCHY'S : COSMOS. AND SOME MORE SPACE STUFF.

Last Sunday we turned our studio into interstellar space -or intergalactic if you so like- they way it would look if an, umm, elementary school or some kind of vaudevillian basement theatre put up a play about space. We really wanted it to look adorably crappy on one hand with our small self made planets and things hanging by the help of string and clothes pins but on the other hand still keep it on the right side of being deliberately camp (the way we like it) as well as to function as the optional drawing detail or background inspiration.

The navigators of the ship with the brave cosmonaut.
(Our space aesthethics always tend to be rather b-movie retrotastic.)

So as you know from what I've written before, Dr.Sketchy's is a worldwide concept of  "alternative" live model drawing. There have been Dr.Sketchy events in Finland for a decade now, and last autumn Tinker Bell and I revived the Helsinki branch.

We make sure our Sketchy-playlists suit the themes as well and this time we had Bowie and Star Wars scores and such, the usual songs about space that you'd expect, but also the Nasa space recordings of planets for ecample (the ones where the electromagnetic radio waves of the planets are converted into sound waves. Space oooout man!-stuff. You can find those on Spotify too.) Some sound rather "mechanical" and eerie sounding and others sound like some new age meditation stuff or the chill out room at a trance party in 2001. (They probably still sound like that, the chill out rooms, but as we all know I don't go to those anymore. Phew.).

And while we're at it: did you know that they wanted to put The Beatles' Here Comes The Sun on the golden record(s) that are on the Voyager satellites but the record company declined? The internet has told me so. Among many other things*

Johnny posing and attendees drawing.


*) I'm a big space fan; a nightly reader of all things space.
Me: So have you seen this video where my favourite astronaut-
Johnny: Wait, you have a favourite astronaut?
Tinker: Of course she does
Some part of me will obviously always be an 11-year old kid.

(Altough, to be honest, it's more about space time and gravity and trying to grasp the endlessness, about philosophical views on cosmos fas well as random weird facts for me, rather than space ships and astronauts, Star Trek and scifi. I like reading about things I have a hard time comprehending, like quantum physics for example. But space ships and astronauts can be worth some night time googling too; and I happen to think this space water here is cool (wash my hair in space though
.)

Ok so one more space-thing, because this bothered and freaked me out as a kid (and, ehrm, perhaps at some moments in my adult life too), but: no astronaut has ever fallen off a space ship and drifted off for eternity into space. You can sleep at night now, you're welcome!
(But your fingernails might come off though. Aaaaa!)

But back to our own little cosmos in Helsinki now.

Drawing by Minka Lindfors.

Thanks to Johnny and everyone who attended! The next Helsinki Sketchy will be July 8, and that one we'll have at Mascot (and when night falls we'll continue the evening with our summer's Rubies Klubit event)! Don't miss that one.

THE COLOUR OF POMEGRANATES

Some time ago I watched the film Sayat-Nova / The Colour of Pomegranates.

It is a1968 Soviet film written and directed by Sergei Parajanov that tells the story bout Sayat Nova, the Armenian 18th century poet and musician. It describes his life symbolically and poetically via his works, often with an allegoric meaning, rather than presenting the events told in a form that we are used to. This did not result in a very amicable reception from Soviet officials the time; the name of the film was changed from Sayat-Nova to The Colour of Pomegranates the most religious iconography were edited away, and the international release was not until years later. (Plus, Parajanov was persona non grata because of his films for a long time and was also imprisoned in the 70's.) But the internet can tell you all that in better detail.

The Colour of Pomegranates is different from and not directly comparable to any other film I've seen - I got into watching if after reading a film review int he paper that said it was un-rateable, as it is a category of it's own. It's a captivating and also, in it's on way, a very strange film.

Actress Sofiko Chiaureli plays several roles troughout the film, both male and female.

The scenes are like paintings; tableaus with Armenian imagery and folkloristic elements. For me it's like some snippets from a memory, the way the childhood is remembered with some details strong and others more fairy tale like, and sometimes like a mind flow; of poems or how they may have been inspired. Not always easy to get but then again one does not have to.

The movie just quit on Yle Arena (great timing I know you're welcome) but is available here and there online and for purchase on Amazon. The 2014 restored version is the closest to the original cut.


Film caps via image searches, mainly from here and here.

FOR THE 10TH AND LAST TIME

Tonight the tenth -and final- Helsinki Burlesque Festival begins!
Just checked into the hotel (staying in the city to avoid the long drive home two nights in a row, plus to be able to sip some bubbly as well ;) and will head to the venue in just a bit.

Today we are opening the festival with a  gigantic number featuring  both of our performing student troupes on stage, as well as Tinker Bell and me. That means 27 pairs of legs dancing around and a whole lot of choreographing with small warrior orcs (from some role play game that one of our students gave us to use, the way some use chess pieces -  to structure formations and positions of the dancers on a small scale) before that  -it's an act and  a concept we've planned for over a year and have rehearsed for six months with the ladies and it's very rewarding to get it out on stage tonight. A A bit artsy (with proportions like this it has to), super classic and, as already said - huge. Above is a little sneak peek without giving too much away. For those of you with tickets, see you soon, for the rest, we'll get back to this in pictures later on.

SHOWTIME!

A few photos from a show we did last week with The Ruby Knuckles Sextet.

All photos by Jani Karlsson.

DO THE TWIST, DO THE GO GO, DO THE -

Here's the music video for the UMK17 participation song that I am a part of!

We filmed it in November with a bunch of our friends and students taking part of the shoot.
Some people love it and others hate it but that's how it is with most things in this world.

It's going to be really interesting to get to do the actual show on January 28th because it's, of course, a production of a size a lot different than the ones I normally get to work with. It's also naturally a rather time and energy demanding process, albeit also a fun one, of which you can see more of in my instagram and the Ruby Knuckles instagram aswell.