THE VINTAGE REALM

Ok everybody!
Long time no internet, and happy we-are-totally-living-in-what-was-once-sci-fi-future-2018!

So, last year I was working in this production that will now be on TV1 starting March 29; Vintage-valtakunta:

Here's the teaser clip! Sadly it won't show abroad, Finland only:

Vintage-valtakunta | Teaser | Vintage-valtakunta

LUST

Late last summer we shot a series of editorial photos with Karl Vilhjálmsson for a feature article series for Hufvudstadsbladet.  The series is about lust and how it has been depicted and received in film, literature and society in Finland.

The articles talk about censorship of erotica and sex and Finnish film history related to that, how a famous daring film affected the actress, and also about the many faces of porn, the small domestic industry as well as research around the subject.

Modelling with me were Ruska Schönberg and Sampo Marjomaa. Some of the images we shot in our back yard, I guess the views are familiar to some of you already.

The images play with the mindscapes and clichés around the themes. We had a lot of fun shooting these!  (And some people were, of course, offended by the whole thing). 

Photos by Karl Vilhjálmsson.

HALLOWEEN FUN, TODAY!

What to do today?
Let me help you with that:

Come to Sture 21 for a set of Dr. Sketchy's and then in the evening join the best, most sparkling and craziest Halloweenn party in town, when we throw our RubiesKlubit: MÖRKÖKLUBI Halloween burlesque show.
Booooh!

UNDER THE MISTLE TEASE

I made a poster today.
And I am making an event in two months:

This will be the fifth edition of Under the Mistle Tease already! Crazy how time flies.
More info on the event page, tickets from our Studio Shangri-La webshop.

But before that it's time for our other event; the Halloween edition of Rubies Klubit: MÖRKÖKLUBI! October 28th at Sture 21.
Be there or, umm, be taken by some ghouls or so.

PIN-UPS FOR 2018!

The Pin-Up Finland calendar for 2018, featuring the finalists of the competition, is out now! And the very intense yearly "pageant"-weekend is also over. I slept until 12 today and had a big milkshake for lunch and am now at our studio with the intention to actually attend one of our guest-teacher classes myself. Mondays are my Sundays you know!

Anyway, here are the calendar pictures!

The cover picture depictsde a usual day at the Shangri-La Rubies office.

January: Lily Wanderlust
February: Mondy Delight & Marie Luscious

March: Lady Winkheart
April: Shanona Dreem 

May: Miss Kris

June: Arctic Cherry 

July: Stormin A. Teacup & Betty von Black

August: Miss Alice Angel 

September: Nancy Gold & Miss Cherry Bow

October: Sin D.Skye 

November: Miss Rosie Revolution

December: Lilia Regina & Sanita de Champagne

What is your favourite month?

The jury selected Sin D.Skye as this year's Pin-Up Finland! 1st runner up was Stormin A.Teacup and 2nd Miss Kris! But as usual the most important is really not winning but the experience, networking and the expoure the competition gives.

Styling, concept & direction: TurrrboCherry & Tinker Bell

Photography: Micky's Pictures / Mikael Häggblom

Muah: Eve Komi, Taija Riihimäki, Miss Kris

Production: Autot ja Viihde/Pin-Up Finland / Kirsi Ojaniemi
-Feel free to share if properly credited!-

WORK / PIN-UP FINLAND

This summer and fall I have as usual been working with Pin-Up Finland, which is the oldest and biggest pin-up competition for aspiring pin-up models over here,  creating and directing photoshoots for the finalists together with Tinker Bell and planning the show at the Pin-Up Finland finals in Lahti.

This year we shot a calendar old school style for the competition.  It both amazes and pleases me to find how much stuff and how many props one has gathered during the years, as a lot of the things we use for shoots we grab from the stashes at home.

Different skills come in to place. Like the anatomy of lifting skirts for example. (Or how to smoothly blow up beach balls, as un-willingly demonstrated by yours truly over in a video series at IG...)

All set-up and light-check images must always be dorky.

In the end got to shoot a little ourselves as well.

Concepting and styling photoshoots is something I really like to do and would I have more time over from the rest of the eclectic mess of things I work with I would definitely do more of this. But both my colleague and I are people who do not know how to deal with the concept of "time off" so we do have some plans in mind regarding this and the future...

The calendar will be out in time for the finals at the Autot &Viihde-weekend.
You can see some pictures of the contestants over at mtv-viihde for example (under a typical click-bait headline *adding eyeroll*), in a shoot that we put together with Asko Rantanen over at Weird Antiques (but where the finalists otherwise got to style themselves).

See you in Lahti on Saturday!

Phone snaps of the set photos by Mikael Häggblom, the rest is à la iphone from my instagram.

DR.SKETCHY'S : COSMOS. AND SOME MORE SPACE STUFF.

Last Sunday we turned our studio into interstellar space -or intergalactic if you so like- they way it would look if an, umm, elementary school or some kind of vaudevillian basement theatre put up a play about space. We really wanted it to look adorably crappy on one hand with our small self made planets and things hanging by the help of string and clothes pins but on the other hand still keep it on the right side of being deliberately camp (the way we like it) as well as to function as the optional drawing detail or background inspiration.

The navigators of the ship with the brave cosmonaut.
(Our space aesthethics always tend to be rather b-movie retrotastic.)

So as you know from what I've written before, Dr.Sketchy's is a worldwide concept of  "alternative" live model drawing. There have been Dr.Sketchy events in Finland for a decade now, and last autumn Tinker Bell and I revived the Helsinki branch.

We make sure our Sketchy-playlists suit the themes as well and this time we had Bowie and Star Wars scores and such, the usual songs about space that you'd expect, but also the Nasa space recordings of planets for ecample (the ones where the electromagnetic radio waves of the planets are converted into sound waves. Space oooout man!-stuff. You can find those on Spotify too.) Some sound rather "mechanical" and eerie sounding and others sound like some new age meditation stuff or the chill out room at a trance party in 2001. (They probably still sound like that, the chill out rooms, but as we all know I don't go to those anymore. Phew.).

And while we're at it: did you know that they wanted to put The Beatles' Here Comes The Sun on the golden record(s) that are on the Voyager satellites but the record company declined? The internet has told me so. Among many other things*

Johnny posing and attendees drawing.


*) I'm a big space fan; a nightly reader of all things space.
Me: So have you seen this video where my favourite astronaut-
Johnny: Wait, you have a favourite astronaut?
Tinker: Of course she does
Some part of me will obviously always be an 11-year old kid.

(Altough, to be honest, it's more about space time and gravity and trying to grasp the endlessness, about philosophical views on cosmos fas well as random weird facts for me, rather than space ships and astronauts, Star Trek and scifi. I like reading about things I have a hard time comprehending, like quantum physics for example. But space ships and astronauts can be worth some night time googling too; and I happen to think this space water here is cool (wash my hair in space though
.)

Ok so one more space-thing, because this bothered and freaked me out as a kid (and, ehrm, perhaps at some moments in my adult life too), but: no astronaut has ever fallen off a space ship and drifted off for eternity into space. You can sleep at night now, you're welcome!
(But your fingernails might come off though. Aaaaa!)

But back to our own little cosmos in Helsinki now.

Drawing by Minka Lindfors.

Thanks to Johnny and everyone who attended! The next Helsinki Sketchy will be July 8, and that one we'll have at Mascot (and when night falls we'll continue the evening with our summer's Rubies Klubit event)! Don't miss that one.

CURL THAT HAIR AND STYLE THOSE LOCKS TURKU!

Hello Turku Åbo!(For some reason I feel like adding a CHOO CHOO or HONK HONK here after that, so, there you go, either one.)

I am teaching my hair workshop at Studio Winkheart next Sunday.
Find the even HERE  and sign up by emailing me at turrrbocherry@gmail.com!

THE SPECTACLE

A couple of photos from the gigantic number we created for the tenth and final Helsinki Burlesque Festival with both of our performing student troupes from our burlesque school  -

We are already on our eight and sixth season with the troupes, and so far we've created ten acts for them separately, but this was the first one we did with both troupes together and also the first one we put ourselves in as well. And it was, like said, the biggest number done over here so far. And as far as we've concerned, that ever will be; we'll stick to choreographing for max 15 persons; 27 was quite the challenge when it comes to rehearsal space and noise, mainly noise, in the studio.

Not sure when we'll get to do this act again with the full cast - smaller versions will most likely be seen, but I'm super happy that we got our ladies up on that big stage and made lots of epicness happen!

Photos with watermark by Tuomas Lairila and the others by Jari Miettinen.

(In case you've missed it, the studio we run is Studio Shangri-La and our burlesque school -first of it's kind when we started -is called the Shangri-La School of Showgirls.)

FOR THE 10TH AND LAST TIME

Tonight the tenth -and final- Helsinki Burlesque Festival begins!
Just checked into the hotel (staying in the city to avoid the long drive home two nights in a row, plus to be able to sip some bubbly as well ;) and will head to the venue in just a bit.

Today we are opening the festival with a  gigantic number featuring  both of our performing student troupes on stage, as well as Tinker Bell and me. That means 27 pairs of legs dancing around and a whole lot of choreographing with small warrior orcs (from some role play game that one of our students gave us to use, the way some use chess pieces -  to structure formations and positions of the dancers on a small scale) before that  -it's an act and  a concept we've planned for over a year and have rehearsed for six months with the ladies and it's very rewarding to get it out on stage tonight. A A bit artsy (with proportions like this it has to), super classic and, as already said - huge. Above is a little sneak peek without giving too much away. For those of you with tickets, see you soon, for the rest, we'll get back to this in pictures later on.

UMK: TWO MORE DAYS TO GO

Most of my time the past months, or if not most then at least a lot, has been taken up by my participation in UMK; the competition for new music, which in other words is the national selection for the Eurovision.

It has been an interesting project in many ways, but we'll get back to all that next week when this is over!
 

Some time ago we were filming some inserts for the finals. Chrzu was directing and gave us lollipops.

Everyone loves our glitterboots. But hey who wouldn't.

 

But even awesome glitter boots need to be taken off every now and then.

Btw you did know that Dali designed the logo for Chupa Cups, right?

Last weekend it was our turn to do a Facebook live for UMK. Which we casually shot at Weird Antiques. Love that place. 

 

Tinker Bell and I play miniature bongos.

The place has monkeys. And you know who loves monkey? Me! Me! Me!

They have this monkey-o-matic BimboBox that I one day must own.

And today we had the first rehearsals at the Metro Arena. I'll spend the rest of my week there and on Saturday we go!

(And, oh, there's still time to pre-vote -nr.5- for a few hours, *wink wink*. Only in Finland though, and by signing in to Yle.)