Amsterdam Burlesque Awards in November!

And I can finally announce this! I'm so excited and honoured to be performing at the 3rd Amsterdam Burlesque Award this autumn! I had a great time two years ago when we performed there with Thee Dizzy Daisies, and to make things even better I will be to see a few dear friends again! <3 <3 <3
Aaaand I'll be bringing my "Algae" seaweed fandance to a festival abroad for the very first time, planning to pimp up the fans to celebrate! :-)

Sinsational Spring Awakening 2014! And premiere of my new act "Algae"

Second belated post! This time about the Sinsational Spring Awakening, which usually happens around half-way through May, and is one of the major burlesque events in Helsinki. The theme this year was the animal kingdom, and the weather joined up by providing us real jungle weather! It was insanely hot and humid, and the room that was our backstage had been in the sun the whole day! Result: I have never seen so many pasties and tassels fly away on stage before :-D

We performed our Crazy Kitties act with Gigi Praline (unluckily enough a sudden pneumonia stole Sandy from us for the weekend), and besides that we both had the chance to premiere our latest solo acts. 

My new solo act "Algae" was born when I was aiming for a bit of an "unusual" feather fan act, and got inspired by the beauty of the mysterious coral reefs and algae. I made my costume from scratch (except the headpiece), and the main inspiration for it were some gorgeous wild silk and beaded Indian textiles I found in ebay. I was also happy to experiment with an unusual colour combination! :-)

Some pictures of my Algae act
picture by Jari B. Miettinen

As I said, I wasn't the one to make the headpiece. I'm actually so lucky when it comes to headpieces, that I have several friends who are professional costumers and hatmakers! And the decision is always a pretty tough one, let me tell you :-)

This time I decided to pay for the expertise of my friend Tiitta Räsänen, who has several years of experience working at Helsinki's Opera House. She's specially talented when it comes to beading, and that's exactly what I wanted for this costume! So as I usually do with my talented friends, I showed her a couple of pictures that inspired me (in this case mostly Art Noveau style), and let her do the rest. I'm in love with the outcome! By the way, she does of course takes orders and I absolutely recommend you check her website Tiisin' Design ;-)

Algae headpiece by Tiisin' Design
picture by Hanna Erkinjuntti

New solo act in the making: sneak peek

I've been wanting to create a feather fan act for a few years now, but they are one of the biggest clichés in burlesque and I wanted something with a bit of a twist. I'm still not sure if I will succeed in making it a bit less of a cliche, but at least I think the idea is unusual! I decided to make a seaweed act, so that the fans themselves would also be seaweed. I came up with this idea over a year ago, but I wasn't even finished with my Mata Hari act then, and before I could start working on this one I came up with the idea for The Chap and an irresistible urge of it being my next :-)

Nevertheless, now it's finally time for my Algae act! I have barely started to work on the costume yet, but I'm showing you a few sneak peek pictures of some of the materials. Why? Well, to tease you of course! ;-D

And because I'm absolutely in love wih the indian textiles I'm using for this one, sewing is a pleasure with them! 

left top: gorgeous indian textiles, left bottom: unusual
coloured feather fans, right: some trim and fringe