Elina Pirinen (FI) performance „Ghosts of Rosegarden“ takes place during STF 2026. Get STF 2026 passes and more info HERE.
Ghosts of Rosegarden is a big stage piece for seven dancers and five musicians by Finnish-Carelian interdisciplinary dance artist Elina Pirinen. Her works are known for bringing together “high art” and “folk art.” Rooted in female specific experience, her work engages with the appalling while remaining luminous. It moves between the subconscious, the humorous, the divine, and the primal; between ritual, riot, and mysticism. Pirinen is interested in a world that can only be reached through the synthesis of corporeality, live music, and stage.
Ghosts of Rosegarden is an expressive fairy tale about a garden brimming with libidinal wonders. There, seven ecstatic wildlings, a mother and her dead cat, a hot string quartet and an amorous bassoonist stop each other’s blood and burst the air out of one another.
They blossom, engage in cheerful perversions and sacrifice themselves day and night at their otherworldly, never-ending barbecue parties. They grill dust and lava, serving up delicious new prophecies. They embrace trauma-islands inherited from their ancestors, scratch the writing of love with the thorns of roses, and chase prayers into the azure blue of the sky.
Deep in the back of the garden wanders the cycle of destruction and creativity.
The piece performs boisterous autopsies and twists the plots of the past and current narratives of sacrifice.
The piece is co-produced by Zodiak- Center for New Dance, Avanti! chamber orchestra, Sõltumatu Tantsu Lava, Tallinn, Dansens Hus, Stockholm and BIT Bergen Internasjonale Teater, Bergen.
Elina Pirinen is a Finnish-Carelian choreographer, dancer, musician, curator and teacher. Pirinen’s artistry and practice is entangled in choreography, dancing, music making and experimental writing, pedagogy and curating. Her creations are known for female-specifically doomy and excessive, divine and nethermost, ritualistic, boisterous, mysterious, humorous, queer-psychic, neo-romantic, and primitive hybrid of “high art” and “art of the folk”. In addition to working with Finnish contemporary performance art venues and companies, she has collaborated with Iceland Dance Company, Carte Blanche Norway, Spring Festival Utrecht , Arsenic Lausanne, Hellerau Dresden, New York Live Arts, ImpulsTanz among others. Her works have toured widely on international stages, she has been awarded with Antonia Prize 2025, Prix Jardin d’Europe prize in ImPulsTanz Vienna 2015 and with The Finnish Critics' Association honorary prize Critics' Spurs 2014. She also works with domestic animals in need and plays and sings affective, romantic, peculiar and thunderian doom-baroque-synthesis-psycho-mortal-lyrical music with her orchestra Al2Be3 and FeO4.
Direction, choreographical practice, libretto: Elina Pirinen
Dancers: Simone Benini (IT), Elias Berglund (FI), Karolina Ginman (FI), Age Linkmann (EE), Arolin Raudva(EE), Vera Tegelman (FI), Julia Mäkelä (FI) feat. Elina Pirinen (FI)
Composer, sound designer: Ville Kabrell
Lighting and space designer: Mateus Manninen
Dramaturge: Ami Karvonen
Costume design: Antrea Kantakoski
Live camera concept and direction: Jakob Öhrman
Strings and bassoon: Avanti! chamber orchestra: Terhi Paldanius, Reeta Maalismaa (violin), Hanna Hohti (viola), Joasia Cieslak (cello), Antti Salovaara (bassoon)
Outside eye: Heidi Väätänen & Carmen Mehnert
Duration: 2h
Artist talk with the choreographer takes place after the performance on the 16th of October.
The performance is accessible with a wheelchair and there is no language barrier
Von Krahl theatre • Telliskivi tänav 60a/9, 10412 Tallinn, Harju maakond, Estonia
