THE GRAND OPENING

Yesterday we celebrated the opening of our studio Studio Shangri-La, whih we have been working on during the whole summer, and for such a long time before that on a mental level. I was, as you may undertand, rather busy but did force myself to manage and snap a few pictures during the evening.

Ruska / Tinker, who is my performer and business partner.

 

My will be working at the desk greeting you when you arrive!

We have Saana Koskinen's Showgirls Series exhibited on our walls.

And here she is herself. Saana is also a fabulous singer, as some of you may know.

Our student troupe The Shangri-La Showgirls after their pastel-kinky-pinup-cherry-blossoms-performance.

And we had the bestest Knucklebone Oscar playing. 

Oh, and as you can see we have a stage in our studio as well (that we have built ourselves!).

The artistry of pastries. Violet-blackberry-white chocolate petit choux for the guests. Seriously, I don't get how people come up with these things but I am happy they do!

Also vegan rum-rose petal pastries and raw raspberry-coconut pastries. Our friend Julia made these. She truly is a cake wizard. There were a couple of boxes of  raw swees left over so I have had them for breakfast and lunch today not to waist them. Not complaining.

Espresso martinis. I could totally have these for brekfast as well but I am perhaps not quite at that point in my life -yet. But I'm telling you, espresso martinis is the thing.
(But as we also are a well being studio and not just a sinful redcurteined martini filled burelsque place we did serve aloe vera juice as well. But that makes less of a picture ;)

And here we are, still for a brief second.

Season passes, cards and single classes are for sale at the studio as well as in our web store at Holvi!
Alla måste köpa. On Saturday we have demo classes from 11am onwards to a reduced price, do drop in! Schedule and more info can be found on Facebook.

FANTASIA PICNIC / SITTING FOR A PAINTING

A couple of days ago Dag and I went for a late afternoon park picnic. It also served as a set up for a future painting. It will part of a series of paintings of performers. But more on that once the series is finished and the artist has gotten to present her work by herself first.

First of all I just have to say that  IT IS FINALLY WARM.

Tinker's rainbow hair.

Fiona, the milliner.

Sandy.

Pepper and her hairpiece.



Mimi and her girls.

And me and my little boy.

Who found a new friend.

Picnic patterns.

The artist memorizing.

Petra's paintings are always full of colours and patterns and it will be interesting to see how this eventually turns out!

KING OF HELSINKI

A couple of weeks ago we filmed a tongue-in cheek music video for Knucklebone Oscar. (A legendary Helsinki band that has been around for well over a decade. We've done some old school live band & burlesque collaboration with another one of Oscar's bands; White Knuckles Trio.)

I took some behind-the-scenes photos during the day.

he Windows '95 Man (he has this retrotastic DJ-character thing) helping to prepare some 300 balloons.

Walking among some 300 balloons. They started moving, wandering, by themselves at some point. Freaky (and also totally explainable).

Shot on good ol' VHS with a 1989 camera!

It was a rather long but hilariously silly day.

You can see the result here - this will most likely open up more for those born in the 70's and 80's that attended school discos in their pre-teens. And have video footage on VHS of that...

(The disco-sign on the door was suitably there when we arrived already, as a remnance from the last party of the year.)

SPECTACULAR SPECTACLES AND A WHOLE LOT OF GLITTER

Here are some pictures on-and-off stage from our first night of SPECTAC-O-RAMA.

The second nigt was last Saturday and even though I was still flush and with a voice that would have made even Tom Waits jealous I made it trough the night; we all did it with a bang and the house was full again!

 

 

Spectac-O-Rama is a two hour show with rockabilly music and burlesque inspired by cabaret and vaudeville. Those who have seen our shows in the early years, and our mutual shows with Sweet Jeena from those times, got a lot of old school stuff as we performed our classics like the Western Revue and The Bikini number but with new, live music twists. Birdwatching gentlemen, mescaline cacti, cardboard horses, thirsty cowboys in despair, angry monkeys and so on. The usual. We also had Mr drag n'roll Mia Li Moon and our student troupe the Shangri-La Showgirls on stage - it's rather impressive actually that we managed to fit so many people onto that small space!

Btw. You can see more of our Showgirls and what we've been up to with them and with the rest of our students as well when we organise this year's Under the Mistle Tease  - the Christmas show & party of our studio and burlesque school - next week! And here I have to mention that we also have an intern working for us (wooh, adulthood points!) who we so could not have managed without during these nights as she carried a lot of stuff around and did a lot of dressing us up and down during the two hours were we change clothes so many times that I don't even want to think about it now afterwards. We'll, this production is not totally over, new stages awaits later on!

Photos by Janne Porkka and Tuomas Lairila