”Darlings”

July 27 at 8pm Inmet-areena

Tommi Kitti & Co. will grace Full Moon Dance with a cross-section of works that have featured in their repertoire over the last five years. The dance company is led by its choreographer and artistic director Tommi Kitti.

 During the evening we will get to see and experience a unique combination of dance and music. This selection of old pieces does not attempt to be a new dance work as such, but old works will appear on stage in new forms.

”Darlings” includes extracts from A piece for a small stage, Leap, du-dun-duu, Sketches and In the Wrong Key. We return to those moments in works whose unique qualities have given them a life of their own independent of the works they belong to.

Tommi Kitti

Tommi Kitti's gift as a dancer is unique; it is not just a talent for magnificent movement and a mastery of different styles of dance, but an ability to convey feelings and thoughts through movement. Kitti's virtuoso movement, infallible musicality and exceptional human and humane relationship with dance have seen him rise over the years to become one of the most important names in Finnish and international contemporary dance.

Kitti began his dance career at the beginning of the 1970s. He has worked as a choreographer and dancer in e.g. Helsinki Dance Company, Cullberg Ballet, Dance Theatre Raatiko and the Finnish National Ballet.

 Apart from his career as a dancer, Kitti has choreographed over 40 works since 1975, including Loviisa (Louisa) for the Finnish National Ballet in 1987, a work based on one of Hella Wuolijoki's Niskavuori plays which was made to music composed by Eero Hämeenniemi, and Leonardo, a collaboration with the same composer which was commissioned for the Helsinki Festival in 1996. His work Still Life for Four Dancers was awarded the special prize at the Rencontres Chorègraphiques Internationales de Seine-Saint-Denis choreography competition in 2000.

Kitti has led his own dance company, Tommi Kitti & Co., since 2000. Its most recent ensemble works were In the Wrong Key (2003) and A piece for a small stage (2004).

Kitti has received Finland's most prestigious artistic awards, including the State Prize for Merits in Dance in 2000 and a Pro Finlandia Medal in 2003.

Over and above his work as a dancer, choreographer and pedagogue, Kitti has spent the last ten tears developing and clarifying the core areas of his artistic vision, a process that has seen him become increasingly interested in improvisation and the possibilities it has to offer. Kitti is a popular guest in many improvisation performances, in which his inimitable artistic qualities win the audience over time and time again.

Tommi Kitti & Co. was formed in 2000. The dance company's repertoire consists of full-evening long and short ensemble works and solos by Kitti himself. The company makes an average of two premieres a year and has in recent years performed at all the biggest Finnish dance festivals as well as in a number of important international dance arenas.

 The artistic originality and diversity of the repertoire, together with the virtuosity of the dance and a deeply human content, have made Tommi Kitti & Co. a name to be reckoned with in both the Finnish and international dance field.