AT THE STUDIO

Late night at the studio with a cup of the after the classes.

We are very happy with how the space turned out and also proud that we did it by ourselves (if you don't count building two walls which we had a builder do), stage and all!

Here's how it looked before:

And now:

(Our landlord said he was surprised too see what we managed to do with the space.)

Here in action rehearsing with one of our performing troupes!

The dressing room. We also have another smaller mirrored rehearsal space with storage for our costumes but that space is still just filled with said costumes, suitcases and props everywhere waiting for some law and order...

One thins I still find hard to believe is that we managed to do this without any external funding.  That was never the plan though, but as we did not start a new business - we've been doing all of this on a smaller scale for years - but was going about things the normal way while setting the studio up, and as we stumbled across the space rather quickly (suitably in the same building we have been in for years) we just did not have the time to get any. We had worked hard the years before this that made it possible - now it's time work even harder -and hope- it will continue to be so!

I will confess that the start has been rather slow though. And that is just due to ourselves. Getting our website up and running would be rather (read:very) important (NO it is still not properly up in it's final form, I know!), and doing actual marketing as well, not just running everything trough Facebok as we've done (and done well) the past years, is next on our agenda. After Along with traveling to Berlin to perform next week, doing the once-in-a-lifetime custom ordered show for Sofi Oksanen's release of her new novel Norma and producing the Pin-Up Finland competition. Oh yeah and setting up Spectac-O-Rama for this year! The autumn of stress.

But. Yes. Our studio is in Lauttasaari and we have classes from Monday to Thursday with special courses those weekends we are not away performing! Buy your classes *here*  and schedule+book them **here**! Pilates on Tuesday mornings and Thursday nights, Seasonal Yoga the other way around and burlesque dance classes every night! It is also possible to book the studio for personal practice (daytime, evenings available in the smaller room) or for teaching during the weekends.

SAY CHEESE! / THE PIN-UP FINLAND FINALISTS' PHOTO SHOOT

Last week we organised the official photo shoot for the twelve Pin-Up Finland finalists!
As you  may remember from earlier, I am part of producing and hosting the competition this year,

The day started at our studio for hair and make up. The contestants arrived from all corners of the country for their big day. On big shoots like this, there is always a lot of waiting.

We are very proud to have Béseame Cosmetics as one of our sponsors for the finals!

Make up artists Mercy and Mia in full action.

Me rolling some hair. (Photo by @ruskarieban)

We had one shoot on location in our studio. But for our main calendar pictures we headed elsewhere!

Here are our fabulous  outfits for the ladies, put together by our clothing sponsor Vintag'Eijas! Vintag'Eijas is a vintage store as well a seamstress (that I am sure many of you have heard of in blogs and such, even if you may not be Finnish) and she had done an amazing job making outfits for the girls!

And then we headed over to our actual location; the old lighthouse ship Relandersgrund! It serves as a café nowadays. Worth a stop if you are in town; it's details and the  surroundings are very nice.

 And then it started raining...

 Waiting out the rain on board.

So on to plan B, taking the rest of the pictures inside the ship.

 Hannes at work.

At the end of the* (very long) day it was time for us to get out of the comfy wear and into the little shorts and do one last round of posing ourselves. Here's an instagram shot of that, the real pictures are to be revealed later.

(...And we've seen them already and they are just great! Meep meep!)

*) well, almost at the end of. We still had to dig out staples (from posters) from and paint one wall back at our old studio. Phew!

HELSINKI STROLL

Yesterday we went into town for a stroll together with Dag's oldest (half)brother . Which does not happen that often, having a day off and haning it in town, when you spend most of your time way out in the countryside.

Walking in Ruoholahti, which is something I almost never do; walk around in, other than walk just trough. I used to come trough here almost every day when at lunch from the harbour.

Some hundred meters further a whole new part of town has sprung up during Dag's lifetime on parts of what was once the old harbour. It looks different every time I pass. When I left work before Dag was born this was all just one big construction site. (And half of it still is.)

Do you know how many times I stared at those shipyard cranes and the blue dry dock wall opposite of our spot in the harbour? Do you know how many times? Of course you don't, but many, many times I tell you.

 We popped by the flea market. Dag got a red smiling tractor.


Had lunch at Moko market. Salad with kale and marinated carrots and fresh pea puree. Nom.

 Moko is also an interior store, with lots of wonderful useful-and-less usefull stuff, books and some foods as well.


 Moko has a playground space for kids too. Convenient.

I used to go there and shop all the time before, you know, when I had a job with a steady monthly wage and could do shopping just for fun. When you work solely by yourself things are so much more uneven. (I might have to get myself some pineapple and palm tree boxes though. Because they are always good for somehting...)

But I wasn't really there to get anything for myself but to pick up some things for our studio. Which I will get back to later. (And get back to a lot to; you'll see.)

 Later we did some toy shopping -there are a many small misters all turning one year old in August.

Sometimes I wonder how these small stores that are specialized in something can pull trough when rents in town are what they are - I remember thinking so about this toystore too when walking past it before, do people really buy enough to make it go around? But now I get it, in this case at least, I just wanted to buy everything in there.

Then we went to join up with some 15,000 other people at the Citizen's Square. 

The rather impromptu manifestation for multiculturalism and anti-racism; We Have A Dream, took place. It was organised in just a couple of days as a counter-reactions to some writings of a politician and the discussion it sparked.

Then the teenager got tired.

So we had burgers at the new-in-town hipster burger place Friends & Brgrs. (Everything there is made from scratch and with clean ingredients. The queue in the restaurant is thus thereafter. Here's my veggieburger. Approved!)

And strawberry milkshake. Made on actual real berries, not just aromes.

More days should end with strawberry milkshakes.

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