Irish Premiere of Tero Saarinen Company’s Wanha at the International Beckett Festival

  • Image: Esa Kyyrö PDC

    Tero Saarinen Company is performing one of Tero Saarinen’s early works Wanha at the Happy Days Enniskillen International Beckett Festival in Northern Ireland 24-25 August 2013.

    The original piece was a duetto with Saarinen himself and a fellow Finn Kenneth Kvarnström. The performance was commissioned and premiered at Kuopio Dance festival June 1994.

    At the Beckett Festival two male dancers, Henrikki Heikkilä and Mikko Lampinen, dressed in tuxedos and bowler hats tell a tale of friendship, life and ageing. The work is not in Tero Saarinen Company’s normal repertoire. It is a re-adaptation especially choreographed for the festival.

    Happy Days is an annual festival celebrating the work and influence of the Literature Nobel Prize winner and Irish avant-garde writer Samuel Beckett. Beckett spent his formative years on Ireland’s only island town Enniskillen. Wanha has been compared to Samuel Beckett’s play Waiting for Godot; the mood is similarly expectant and delicate, while also mundanely cruel and tinged with melancholy humor.


    Wanha by Tero Saarinen Company
    Ardhowen Theatre
    24-25 August 2013, 7pm
    97 Dublin Rd, Enniskillen BT74 6HN, Northern Ireland
    Tickets: £8 / £6

    More information:
    Tero Saarinen Company
    Happy Days enniskellen international Beckett festival