BIOGRAPHY

Virpi Pahkinen has been succesfully touring the world in her dual role as choreographer and solo dancer. Her solos have met critical acclaim in over 40 countries including Australia, Mexico, South Africa and Lebanon.

Virpi Pahkinen has also created works for several companies as Ballet Poznanski, Vietnamese National Opera Ballet, North 59° and The Young Dance Company.

She has also choreographed and appeared in a short dance film for wide screen, Atom by Atom, an existential thriller filmed on the remarkable volcanic mountains of Lanzarote and M de Mafra which was shot at the Palácio Nacional de Mafra Library in Portugal. The work Bardo was also made as a TV-production for The Swedish Television. The film Bardo 010 was awarded the Golden Antenna in Bulgaria 1998, and has been broadcasted in Singapore, Japan, The Netherlands and Scandinavia.

Her musicality and her interest in light as architecture has attracted
artists of the highest quality, the lighting designer Jens Sethzman for instance, the composer Akemi Ishijima and live-musicians such as Jon Rose (violin,etc.) and Sussan Deyhim (song).

In 2001, at the International Solo Dance Theatre Festival in Stuttgart, Virpi Pahkinen won the 1st Choreography Prize with her solo Prayer of the Scorpio. In 2002 she was awarded Carina Ari Foundation Gold Medal.

In 1996, Virpi Pahkinen was awarded Finland´s Culture Prize for young artists, and Svenska Dagbladet Opera Prize.

Recently The Swedish Section of International Association of Theatre Critics awarded The 2009 Dance Price with motivation: "Virpi Pahkinen is one of Swedish dance’s most unique artists. In her solo work she creates her own universe through her vibrant musicality and sense of form. Her distinct and extremely flexible gestalt seems at times to have crawled out from the dry waves of vast desert, at other times to be a transparent membrane for cosmic power."

She has taken part as a dancer in several of Ingmar Bergman´s theatre productions at the Royal Dramatic Theatre in Stockholm: The Bacchae, Peer Gynt, Goldberg Variations, Space and Time, A Winter´s Tale and Ghostsonata.

In 2009 Atena Kustannus published Virpi Pahkinen's debut book Käärmeensyöjá (Snake-eater). The Daily Newspaper, Keskisuomalainen described: "The wild freedom of Snake-eater's details and the poetic visions of its prose are a source of both power and levity."

Virpi Pahkinen was born in Finland. She studied piano at the Conservatory in Helsinki, and trained on the choreographer course at the University College of Dance in Stockholm in 1989-1992.