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

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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!

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TWENTY EIGHT SECONDS OF FEBRUARY

Because March is almost over by now, let us naturally (dum di dum...) look at the month before that; one-second-a-day: February 2019

These are so fun to do and I love watching other's mini videos of their months!

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THE SEASON(S) APPROACHING...

Let me first start this by saying that I am definitely and foremost waiting for Halloween (and now that the second week of October is about to start I consider Halloween-season here!).

But.

While it is as little as 80 days until Christmas (!!!),  it is only 56 until our yearly Christmas show, which this year will kick off the whole festive season:

This year we are celebrating at our Rubies-Klubit burlesque club's home venue Sture 21.

Tickets are on sale now; get them in time as they tend to sell out!

Poster by me, as usual.

Ps. and first Halloween, yes. Catch me at these Halloween events: Horror & Tease in Tampere Oct.13 and our very own Rubies Klubit: Demoniklubi on Oct.27!

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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

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HAPPILY EVER AFTER

You recently saw a couple of the photos we took with AskoJonathan Photography for my Happily Ever After-act.

Because behind-the-scenes photos always make things better here's the set up for the series.

A lot can be, and is done by photoshop, but the more you can put into the set organically the better.

So I had the other photoshootees of the day functioning as ground for my rose bushes. As one does.

Obviously the raw shots where there's a faun peeking out under my elbow are the best ones.

Here are some shots of how the actual act looks on stage -

photo: Bernhard Miettinen

photo: Minna Jerrman

photo: Bernhard Miettinen

It's my most Burton-esque act, that even though it begins eerie and sad, sort of a too-late Sleeping Beauty scenario, actually is rather humorous. In a tragicomic Burton kind of way. It started out as an idea for a quick Halloween act for our own event, where I wanted to dance with, what I first just planned as a ghost out of fabric, but then came up with - a skeleton (that you could see me craft on the kitchen floor in October...).  And then of course other things happen, as they tend to do in burlesque.

Some acts I plan for years before I start working with them practically, and some I work on for a year or years before they're out, but sometimes I get the idea and song on spot at once and can get practical right away, which was the case in this one. This act got to jump ahead in the queue (I usually have several acts in the making in one stage or another at once) and was stage ready in a month. Is is a lot of fun to perform (and my bony friend here has a great smile), even though the beginning got so sad I always get a little moved by it myself. Haha.

photo: Asko Jonathan Photography

And tonight it's on at the last ever Pirates Pleasures club: Witch Please!

Sail with me onto dark water at Wäiski!

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THE VINTAGE REALM

Ok everybody!
Long time no internet, and happy we-are-totally-living-in-what-was-once-sci-fi-future-2018!

So, last year I was working in this production that will now be on TV1 starting March 29; Vintage-valtakunta:

Here's the teaser clip! Sadly it won't show abroad, Finland only:

Vintage-valtakunta | Teaser | Vintage-valtakunta

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LUST

Late last summer we shot a series of editorial photos with Karl Vilhjálmsson for a feature article series for Hufvudstadsbladet.  The series is about lust and how it has been depicted and received in film, literature and society in Finland.

The articles talk about censorship of erotica and sex and Finnish film history related to that, how a famous daring film affected the actress, and also about the many faces of porn, the small domestic industry as well as research around the subject.

Modelling with me were Ruska Schönberg and Sampo Marjomaa. Some of the images we shot in our back yard, I guess the views are familiar to some of you already.

The images play with the mindscapes and clichés around the themes. We had a lot of fun shooting these!  (And some people were, of course, offended by the whole thing). 

Photos by Karl Vilhjálmsson.

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HALLOWEEN FUN, TODAY!

What to do today?
Let me help you with that:

Come to Sture 21 for a set of Dr. Sketchy's and then in the evening join the best, most sparkling and craziest Halloweenn party in town, when we throw our RubiesKlubit: MÖRKÖKLUBI Halloween burlesque show.
Booooh!

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UNDER THE MISTLE TEASE

I made a poster today.
And I am making an event in two months:

This will be the fifth edition of Under the Mistle Tease already! Crazy how time flies.
More info on the event page, tickets from our Studio Shangri-La webshop.

But before that it's time for our other event; the Halloween edition of Rubies Klubit: MÖRKÖKLUBI! October 28th at Sture 21.
Be there or, umm, be taken by some ghouls or so.

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PIN-UPS FOR 2018!

The Pin-Up Finland calendar for 2018, featuring the finalists of the competition, is out now! And the very intense yearly "pageant"-weekend is also over. I slept until 12 today and had a big milkshake for lunch and am now at our studio with the intention to actually attend one of our guest-teacher classes myself. Mondays are my Sundays you know!

Anyway, here are the calendar pictures!

The cover picture depictsde a usual day at the Shangri-La Rubies office.

January: Lily Wanderlust
February: Mondy Delight & Marie Luscious

March: Lady Winkheart
April: Shanona Dreem 

May: Miss Kris

June: Arctic Cherry 

July: Stormin A. Teacup & Betty von Black

August: Miss Alice Angel 

September: Nancy Gold & Miss Cherry Bow

October: Sin D.Skye 

November: Miss Rosie Revolution

December: Lilia Regina & Sanita de Champagne

What is your favourite month?

The jury selected Sin D.Skye as this year's Pin-Up Finland! 1st runner up was Stormin A.Teacup and 2nd Miss Kris! But as usual the most important is really not winning but the experience, networking and the expoure the competition gives.

Styling, concept & direction: TurrrboCherry & Tinker Bell

Photography: Micky's Pictures / Mikael Häggblom

Muah: Eve Komi, Taija Riihimäki, Miss Kris

Production: Autot ja Viihde/Pin-Up Finland / Kirsi Ojaniemi
-Feel free to share if properly credited!-

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WORK / PIN-UP FINLAND

This summer and fall I have as usual been working with Pin-Up Finland, which is the oldest and biggest pin-up competition for aspiring pin-up models over here,  creating and directing photoshoots for the finalists together with Tinker Bell and planning the show at the Pin-Up Finland finals in Lahti.

This year we shot a calendar old school style for the competition.  It both amazes and pleases me to find how much stuff and how many props one has gathered during the years, as a lot of the things we use for shoots we grab from the stashes at home.

Different skills come in to place. Like the anatomy of lifting skirts for example. (Or how to smoothly blow up beach balls, as un-willingly demonstrated by yours truly over in a video series at IG...)

All set-up and light-check images must always be dorky.

In the end got to shoot a little ourselves as well.

Concepting and styling photoshoots is something I really like to do and would I have more time over from the rest of the eclectic mess of things I work with I would definitely do more of this. But both my colleague and I are people who do not know how to deal with the concept of "time off" so we do have some plans in mind regarding this and the future...

The calendar will be out in time for the finals at the Autot &Viihde-weekend.
You can see some pictures of the contestants over at mtv-viihde for example (under a typical click-bait headline *adding eyeroll*), in a shoot that we put together with Asko Rantanen over at Weird Antiques (but where the finalists otherwise got to style themselves).

See you in Lahti on Saturday!

Phone snaps of the set photos by Mikael Häggblom, the rest is à la iphone from my instagram.

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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.

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CURL THAT HAIR AND STYLE THOSE LOCKS TURKU!

Hello Turku Åbo!(For some reason I feel like adding a CHOO CHOO or HONK HONK here after that, so, there you go, either one.)

I am teaching my hair workshop at Studio Winkheart next Sunday.
Find the even HERE  and sign up by emailing me at turrrbocherry@gmail.com!

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THE SPECTACLE

A couple of photos from the gigantic number we created for the tenth and final Helsinki Burlesque Festival with both of our performing student troupes from our burlesque school  -

We are already on our eight and sixth season with the troupes, and so far we've created ten acts for them separately, but this was the first one we did with both troupes together and also the first one we put ourselves in as well. And it was, like said, the biggest number done over here so far. And as far as we've concerned, that ever will be; we'll stick to choreographing for max 15 persons; 27 was quite the challenge when it comes to rehearsal space and noise, mainly noise, in the studio.

Not sure when we'll get to do this act again with the full cast - smaller versions will most likely be seen, but I'm super happy that we got our ladies up on that big stage and made lots of epicness happen!

Photos with watermark by Tuomas Lairila and the others by Jari Miettinen.

(In case you've missed it, the studio we run is Studio Shangri-La and our burlesque school -first of it's kind when we started -is called the Shangri-La School of Showgirls.)

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