FILM

The Seventh Salt is filmed in a dramatic environment in Argentina’s Patagonia. In the pink shimmering desert, dancer Fredrik Quiñones struggles in strong winds and is cast into his rite of passage. The salt flat vibrates with other forms of life. The number seven represents personal sacrifice and the search for deeper meaning. The salt purifies, preserves, and shines with a new beginning.

The Seventh Salt premiered on Swedish Television November 5, 2016.

and has also been screened on the Mexico City Videodance Festival 2017

Lights Dance Festival, Aki studio, Toronto, Canada 2018

The huge uprooted tree forms the background to the dancing couple, whose entwining limbs seem to be organic parts of primeval nature. Reaching skyward, searching for a foothold in the viable ground. they are capsuled in earthly paradise of decay and new beginning. Roots link one with strata of evolution process. Time-lapses and relapses. Synapses glow in a cycle of life and death.

Premiered at Dansmuseet, Stockholm, Sweden 2015 and has also been screened on

The Braga International Videodance Festival, Portugal 2016

Bestias Danzantes Dance Film Festival in Santiago, Chile 2017

The Sydney Fringe, Australia 2017

Iowa Int. Screen Dance Festival, 2017

Seattle Transmedia & Independent Film Festival, Seattle, USA 2018

Winner of the Swedish ScreenDance Festival 2017

”Under the gigantic thuja tree there is a micro-cosmos. The dancer passes through several stages in the secretive protection of the branches. With the tips of her fingers she feels the thinnest branches, reading the oldest bark with her feet. The rings of the tree of life spin through her body. A high note on the flute opens up a white gate between the tops of the trees.

“Dance is image. Virpi Pahkinen, in clothing which sometimes follows, sometimes reshapes, is part of a moving image. She illustrates nothing. Instead she takes on the form of insects, organisms or a holy dwelling place. The hands that form a diamond standing on its point: a temple? antennae? a snake’s head? Over the years there have been many films and here she incorporates her dance into open, dramatic, secretive landscapes. In the two new works: “Arbor” and “Sahara”, broadcast on television tonight, trees and sand respectively are animated through her movements and presence.

They are only six and eight minutes long; beautiful occasions to stop, experience how a woman writes herself into the trees. Is in them. IS them. Or the sand; it runs like water around legs and hands, it has no beginning and no end.”

Margareta Sörenson, Expressen

A dung beetle emerges in a desert landscape and embarks on a transformation.

The shadow operates with surgical precision, pulling the darkness towards the blinding light. The hand buried in the sand, un egg of sun and shadow – the news of death calls for rebirth. The wall of sand cracks, sweeping the animal skull and the dancer with it. The flow of movement turns into a battle. The blue wind blows past.

Sahara premiered on Swedish Television April 2013

and has also been screened in the InShadow, Lisboa, Portugal 2013

La Mercè Festival, Barcelona, Spain 2014

Under the gigantic thuja tree there is a micro-cosmos. The dancer passes through several stages in the secretive protection of the branches. With the fingertips she feels the thinnest branches, reading the oldest bark with her feet. The rings of the tree of life spin through her body. A high note on the flute opens up a white gate between the crowns.

Arbor premiered on Swedish Television 2013

and was also screened in InShadow, Lisboa, Portugal 2013

La Mercè Festival, Barcelona, Spain 2014

Movies by Movers, Boone, North Carolina, USA 2015

Sans Souci Festival of Dance Cinema, Boulder, Colorado USA 2016

”Under the gigantic thuja tree there is a micro-cosmos. The dancer passes through several stages in the secretive protection of the branches. With the tips of her fingers she feels the thinnest branches, reading the oldest bark with her feet. The rings of the tree of life spin through her body. A high note on the flute opens up a white gate between the tops of the trees.

“Dance is image. Virpi Pahkinen, in clothing which sometimes follows, sometimes reshapes, is part of a moving image. She illustrates nothing. Instead she takes on the form of insects, organisms or a holy dwelling place. The hands that form a diamond standing on its point: a temple? antennae? a snake’s head? Over the years there have been many films and here she incorporates her dance into open, dramatic, secretive landscapes. In the two new works: “Arbor” and “Sahara”, broadcast on television tonight, trees and sand respectively are animated through her movements and presence.

They are only six and eight minutes long; beautiful occasions to stop, experience how a woman writes herself into the trees. Is in them. IS them. Or the sand; it runs like water around legs and hands, it has no beginning and no end.”

Margareta Sörenson, Expressen

It is a winter night in central Stockholm. After that hockey kids and skaters have left the rink, a butterfly heart is left throbbing under the ice. It breaks through, develops its orange wings and starts to glide with the cold wind. The dizzying light of the full moon makes it turn. The exhausted butterfly frozes into a guardian of the icy field inside the city mandala.

The music is Vivaldi´s winter, scratched and electrified by Mattias Petersson and George Kentros.

Premiered at 29th Uppsala Short film Festival 2010.

Filmed on the remarkable volcanic mountains of Lanzarote.

Premiered at the Gothenburg Film Festival 1999

Awarded Carina Ari Grand Prix in category ”Young Creation” 2000

Screened at Dance On Camera, New York, USA 2001

Dance Camera West, Los Angeles, USA 2002

The Swedish Television

The Finnish Television

Pure energy in lovely dance film

Virpi Pahkinen’s distinctive choreography portrays intractable forces “Soft formations of bone that look totally silky meet a harsh hard moon-landscape of red and burnt brown tones, in the middle of this nothing, the dancer and choreographer Virpi Pahkinen in wild sinking movements. That ”an image says more than a thousand words” is a great lie in what is called the context of art. Few film-makers today succeed as well as written poetry in conjuring out emotions without relying on a simple identifiable action.

The 8 minute wordless short film ”Atom by Atom”, shown in Zita’s ”short and free” series for the next two weeks, is one of the few exceptions. Dance in desert landcape sounds unspeakably pretentious. But the photographer Håkan Berthas in this his first as director, and the pliable photographer Claes Rizell make the silver-clad Pahkinen’s whirling dance into a piece of sheer defiant energy. Two forces, a light figure and her shadow, struggle for supremacy in the lovely but sterile landscape. Light against darkness, life against death, voice against muteness. A delicious way for those not used to it to meet contemporary dance in general and Virpi Pahkinen’s individual suggestive choreography in particular in easily digested doses.”

Helena Lindblad, Dagens Nyheter