Lempi, lempee

2025

'Lempi, lempee is a joint work of dance and choral singing, in which Eevi Kinnunen and Marikki Nyfors perform together with the 40-strong chamber choir of Kuopio Art High School Lumit. The work explores finnish love songs through a young queer perspective.

With the youth, Eevi and Marikki are finding hidden queer gems from the cavalcade of finnish love songs as well as making new adaptations of old classics to better represent the different voices and stories emerging from the working group.

Together with the choir, we look at how Finnish love songs have moved people across decades, and what the timeline written by love songs tells us about the changing society and our relationship to love, in the social and political context of different eras.

From this research we will create the next chapter for ourselves, a shared love universe, guided by the newly found and adapted finnish love songs!

The work will premiere in November 2025 at Kuopio Art High School Lumit’s black box theater as part of the Kuopio250 celebratory year programme.

rehearsal photo

Team and Collaborators

Direction, choreography: Eevi Kinnunen and Marikki Nyfors

Performance: Eevi Kinnunen, Marikki Nyfors and the Chamber Choir of Kuopio Art High School Lumit.

Choir director: Touko Raatikainen

Sound design: Keliel / Eliel Tammiharju

Mentoring: Sari Palmgren

Production: Lisa Kalkowski, Eevi Kinnunen, Marikki Nyfors

Technical Support: Heikki Leppäjärvi

Co-Productions: Riiviöt, Regional Dance Centre of Eastern Finland, Art High School Lumit, Kuopio city.

Funders: Arts Promotion Centre Finland, Finnish Cultural Foundation

Residencies: Routa Company, Haihatus Art Center, Liisa Pentti +Co, Kulttuuriareena 44