Elina Pirinen ©Venla Helenius
Elina Pirinen ©Venla Helenius
Bio

Elina Pirinen's artistry and practice is entangled in choreography, dancing, music making and experimental writing, pedagogy and curating. She is committed to make stage, performative, aural and linguistic autopsies to the subconscious registers, deep primary emotions and intelligence through them. The focuses of her art are in imagination, romanticism, doom, obsessions, nightmares, daydreams, taboos, sorrow, lust, despair, joy, suffering, silence, horror, satisfaction, shame, unwantedness, consolation and hope driven by feministic psychoanalytical depth.

In Finland she has been collaborating regularly with Zodiak - Center for New Dance, Kiasma Theater of Kiasma Museum of contemporary art, performance art venue Mad House, Theatre Academy of Arts University Helsinki, Helsinki Dance Company and Dance House Helsinki. Abroad she has worked with Iceland Dance Company, Carte Blanche, Spring Festival, Arsenic Lausanne, Hellerau Dresden, Buda Kortrijk, New York Live Arts, ImpulsTanz, Seoul Performing Arts festival, Ice Hot Nordic Dance Platform, Norrlandsoperan and Bit Teatergarasjen, Lithuanian Theatre and Dance Academy among others. She has toured widely with her works Mortal Tropical Dances, Personal Symphonic Moment, Meadow, meadow, meadow, Concerto under Waterlilies, Brume de Mer and La Beaute du Coeur and Lover of the Pianist.

Elina Pirinen is awarded with the Finnish State Art Award 2022. She is awarded with Prix Jardin d’Europe prize in ImPulsTanz Vienna 2015 and with The Finnish Critics' Association honorary prize Critics' Spurs 2014. 

https://elinapirinen.com/

Productions

Ghosts of Rosegarden (2026)

Premiere
Ghosts of Rosegarden © Venla Helenius

Ghosts of Rosegarden is a unique hybrid of maternal, classical, and neo-primitivist forms, created by a female-specific big stage presence with expressive dance, a text orchestration recital, string, bassoon, and timpani composition played by a live orchestra, and a live camera transforming the big stage into a theater of physical cinema. 

In the hands of Pirinen, composer Ville Kabrell, dramaturge Heidi Väätänen, spatial and lighting designer Mateus Manninen and video artist Jakob Öhrman the vast work is an enchanting and hilarious autopsy this time using Stravinsky's iconic The Rite of Spring as its source. Stravinsky serves as a freely associative material, details, forms, depths, and absence. In addition to the use of The Rite of Spring, the content and execution of Ghosts of Rosegarden are strongly influenced by numerous works of classical music and their stage librettos and ballets, in which women/girls are sacrificed, murdered, enchanted into fairy-tale creatures, imprisoned, abducted, or otherwise meet a harsh and unfair end. 

In Ghosts of Rosegarden, no female is killed. Instead of the original narrative, these women and girls are reborn again and again in different forms - as dancing, music playing, reciting poetry, flesh and blood, alter egos, wild mothers of the past, present, and future, material for creativity, symbols of life, masters of ceremony, and new icons. 

The work will premiere in Dance House Helsinki's Erkko Hall in October 2026, co-produced by Zodiak- Center for New Dance, Sõltumatu Tantsu Lava, Tallinn, Dansens Hus Stockholm and BIT Teatergarasjen. 

Download dossier (pdf)

Katarina Lindholm, Zodiak - Center for New Dance, katarina.lindholm@zodiak.fi

One person in front, six in the baground all running around a field in the dark, with a spotlight on them, dressed in white gowns and their faces powdered white, with red around the eyes.
Six people in white ghost-like outfits standing in a dried up bush in the dar, with a spotlight on them

REDDENING (short film, 2025)

Available for touring
Film poster, credit: Snem Kayacan

“Four good friends travel through time and space for an alchemical and sensuous celebration full of phantasms. Familiar yet unexpected faces appear along the way.”

REDDENING, by choreographer Elina Pirinen and visual artist Sinem Kayacan, is a genre-bender arthouse fantasy film, at the intersection of contemporary performance and experimental fiction.

The title REDDENING refers to the final stage of alchemy; Rubedo, in which the alchemical transformation takes place. REDDENING explores how a film, as a sensuous object, can pleasure; repulse, nurture, and overall transmute the body of the audience.

Duration: Short Film (15min.)
Genre description: Fiction/Fantasy/Experimental

Read more

Contact: director Sinem Kayacan, sinem.kayacan@zodiak.fi

Tour dates

Atlanta Underground Film Festival.  Atlanta / US  8.-10.8.2025.
Shnit Worldwide San José / Costa Rica. 21-31.8.2025.
BUT (B-Movies, Underground,Trash) Film Festival, Breda / Netherlands.  27.-31.8.2025.
Cinefantasy, São Paulo / Brazil,  2.-7.9.2025.
Clapham International Film Festival, London / UK. 13.-21.9.2025
Sick Chick Flicks, Chapel Hill / US. 20.9.2025.
Torino Underground Cinefest, Torino/ Italy  26.9.- 7.10.2025.
Joburg Underground Film Festival, Johannesburg / South Africa 26.9.- 4.10.2025
Festival Transterritorial de Cine Underground, Punta del Diablo / Uruguay - Ituzaingó / Argentina. 13.10.-1.11.2025.
Austin After Dark Film Festival, Austin,Texas / US. 18.10.2025.
Edmonton Underground Film Festival, Edmonton / Canada, 18.10.2025
Experimental Film Guanajuato, Guanajuato / Mexico, 22.-25.10.2025
Berlin Sci-fi Filmfest, Berlin / Germany, 23.-26.10.2025
Dracula Film Festival, Brasov / Romania, 30.10.-2.11.2025
Maryland Film Festival, Baltimore / US, 5.-9.11.2025
Anomaly - The Rochester Genre Film Festival, Rochester (New York) / US, 5.-9.11.2025
Silver Wave Film Festival, New Brunswick / Canada, 6.-13.11.2025
FIC AUTOR - Author's International Film Festival, Guadalajara / Mexico, 20.-23.11.2025
MATER Art Film Festival (mAFF), Turin / Italy, 20.-23.11.2025
Tanssien valkokankaalla, Kuopio / Finland 22.11.2025
Fotogenia - Cinepoetry & Divergent Narratives Festival, Mexico City / Mexico. 20.-29.11.2025
Amarcort Film Festival, Rimini/ Italy, 25.-30.11.2025 
Melbourne Underground Film Festival, Melbourne / Australia, 28.-30.11.2025 
Another Hole in the Head, San Francisco / US, 1.-25.12.2025
Los Angeles International Underground Film Festival, Los Angeles / US, 7.12.2025
Phenomena, Cult Films and Animation Festival, São Paulo / Brazil, 6.-14.12.2025
Bizarroland Film Festival, Tampa (Florida) / US, 12.-14.12.2025
AVDP - Athens Video Dance Project Festival, Athens / Greece, 13.-16.12.2025
Mutoscope, Lyon/France 16.-18.01.2026
Multiplié / Minimalen Short Film Festival, Trondheim / Norway 13.-18.1.2026
Miami International Science Fiction Film Festival, Miami / US, 31.1.-1.2.2026
San Francisco Independent Film Festival, San Francisco / US, 5.-15.2.2026
International Hollywood Short Film Festival, LA / US, 28.3.2026
ÉCU - The European Independent Film Festival, Paris/France, 24.-26.4.2026
art + film + vienna, Vienna / Austria,13.-16.5.2026
Experimental Fiction Filmmaking Festival (INEFF)/ Manchester / UK, 20.6.2026

Still from the film
Still from the film
Still from the film

Past productions at Zodiak