It’s an enchanting dawn. The children of the beach are sparkling in their swimsuits. Their eyes are filled with sand dust and their chests are hot with blood. The shells of four wild horses hang from a tree. Farces and fanfares lunge like a stray dog’s fart in a murky pool.

In Elina Pirinen’s new multi-artistic stage work, eight adults and eight children perform intense and wonderfully strange games of transformation for themselves and for all of us. They dance, sing and play two ritualistic fables, which transform the big terracotta stage into a whirlwind of phantasms full of unrestrained alter egos, their romance and missions, leather and time, caccio e pepe, C major, tantrums and ghosts.

Doves and Bloods is a hilarious and hopeful game of metamorphosis, building bridges between generations. It freely associates between the magical and the ordinary, the contemporary corporeal, visual art and alternative symphonic music in a divine connection, where the variously wounded still have dreams and a pulse, and a tuned horn next to them.

Let la Dolce Vita be that we get to shine through our subconscious together with our companions, embraced by compassion.

In Doves and Bloods, Pirinen collaborates closely and creates in the process with the artists, composer and sound designer Ville Kabrell, dramaturg and costume designer Heidi Väätänen, and space and lighting designer Mateus Manninen.

On stage and as co-creators, we see a unique group of performers, including children from Käpylä Music College’s wind instrument orchestra playing Terry Riley’s composition “In C” especially arranged for them, freelance artists Simone Lorenzo Benini / Jenni-Elina von Bagh, Karolina Ginman, Leena Nordberg and Tom Rejström, and the Viirus ensemble Maria Ahlroth, Iida Kuningas, Oskar Pöysti and Jessica Raita.

Doves and Bloods is a co-production with Libidian Wonders.

Performance concept, direction, choreographic practice and poems Elina Pirinen 
Composition, musical concept and sound design Ville Kabrell
Costume design and dramaturge Heidi Väätänen
Lighting design and spatial concept Mateus Manninen

On stage Maria Ahlroth, Simone Lorenzo Benini / Jenni-Elina von Bagh, Karolina Ginman, Iida Kuningas, Leena Nordberg, Oskar Pöysti, Jessica Raita, Tom Rejström

Musicians Käpylä Music Institute’s brass band, playing Kabrell’s arrangement of Terry Riley’s “In C” (duration 12min).
Flute Lumi Nordström, Alma Herrala de Vocht
Saxophone Kaapo Hyyppä
French horn Otso Tuomi, Elisa Palmu, Ursula Erola
Trumpet Väinö Tikkanen, Veikka Sompinmäki, Varpu Sakara
Trombone Jussi Hyyppä, Inkeri Erola

Duration 1 h 20 min

Tickets 36 / 28 / 19 €

The performance is supported by Undervisnings- och kulturministeriet, Svenska kulturfonden, The City of Helsinki, Stiftelsen Tre Smeder, Konstsamfundet, Kvarteret Victoria, Taiteen edistämiskeskus, Uudet klassikot

Doves and Bloods was awarded with the Antonia-award 2025 with the following justification:

“Through movement, soundscapes and images, Doves and Bloods paints a multi-artistic masterpiece that plays on the tension between spirit and flesh, between sexuality and death. Just as Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring threw Paris into turmoil in 1913, Doves and Bloods combines the sublime with the hyper-physical, the almost repulsive reminder of one’s own carnality. Like a kaleidoscope, the performance allows the divinity and beauty of human experience to collapse and find intertextuality in human artistic practice spanning centuries.

Enveloping soundscapes and cinematic image compositions transport us from the beginning of life in a Lynchian Black Lodge to an Italian Renaissance work of art where horny devils lure us into dark passageways, only to land in a Roy Andersson-esque tableau accompanied by a children’s orchestra playing brass instruments. Here, humanity is conveyed; anxious and at the same time playful, innovative and intelligent.

Doves and Bloods impresses with its physical expression and its unusually courageous audience contact: babies are born, desire is aroused, battles are fought, and in the midst of it all, affectionate dogs throw themselves helplessly at the audience.”