
Recent artistic projects
Choreographer & Performer
I intend to create aesthetic atmospheres, where the familiar, silly, tender and unknown co-exist.
Ilkosillaan - the naked concert / 2023
Ilkosillaan is a performance hybrid combining a classical music concert and a contemporary dance performance. Everybody is naked - also the audience members. Ilkosillaan is a study of classical music culture and corporeality.
The musical programme contains music from Jouni Kaipainen, Francis Poulenc, Claude Debussy amongst others.
Concept and director: Sanni Kriikku
Performers: Terhi Hart (dance), Miko Kivinen (dance and flute) Vivian Neff (clarinet), Antti Salovaara (bassoon), Veera Snellman (dance and drums), Joel Papinoja (piano) and Sanni Kriikku ( dance and flute).
Music programme: Heta Aho

lollollollollollollollollol / 2023
This is a post-millenial dance piece merging from depression, beauty, precariousness and nostalgy.
The piece has been co-produced by the Regional Center for dance in Eastern Finland. lol has been seen in Kuopio and Joensuu, Finland.
Choreography and concept: Sanni Kriikku and Terhi Hart
Sound and video design: Eetu Vekki
Scenography: Jaana Kurttila and Mirkka Nyrhinen
Photo: Karoliina Gavrilov

Hiljaisuuteen painettu / Carried in Silence / 2023
Carried in Silence is a poetic film, and an extract of a relation between a mother and a daughter. Through contemporary dance and classical music the film speaks about intergenerational trauma and suppressed emotions, carried in silence, from generation to another.
Director and producer: Vilma Tihilä
Choreographer and 1st assistant director: Sanni Kriikku
Director of photography and color grade: Perttu Inkilä
Editing: Sami Hokkanen
Sound design and mixing: Taavi Oramo
Set design: Markus Serala
Costume design: Monika Hartl
Recording producer and sound recording: Viktor Toikkanen Production Company: Culture Company Eloa
Daughter: Aimi Katinas
Mother: Kaisa Niemi
Violin: Aleksi Kotila
Cello: Joasia Cieslak
Harpsichord: Sanni Antikainen
Huldra / 2021
Huldra is a seductive forest creature in Scandinavian folklore.
The performance translates qualities of the huldra into choreography. It investigates the seductive power of repetition and composes affective images through the sensual attunement of two bodies in a space filled with radios covered in hair, fur and flowers.
Choreography: Sara Grotenfelt
Performers: Sanni Kriikku and Corinne Mustonen
Sound design: Eetu Palomäki
Light design: Saana Volanen
Scenography: Eetu Palomäki and Saana Volanen
Huldra was my graduation work from the MA in Dance Performance at Uniarts Helsinki. It was first performed in spring 2021.
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Attention Hole / 2018
Attention Hole explores experimental burlesque, drag, object art and the concept of an erotic stage. It asks funny questions about authenticity and artificiality as parallel aesthetic and experiential concepts as well as animal fantasies and gender as erotic and symbolic fiction. It treats different paraphilias with warmth and welcomes you to a place where joy, desire and sorrow merge from each other.
Choreography: Sanni Kriikku
Performers: Arttu Halmetoja, Hanna Ollikainen, Tuija Lappalainen, Emmi Hakala, Emilia Tuomioja
Sound: Elsa Lydia
Video: Vilma Rimpelä

Second Illusion - art film / 2018
Three women are finding their way out from spaces of stereotypical female characteristics.
What lies inside of those stereotypes?
Do they have to crumble in order to break free?
Second Illusion twists the assumptions of how women are often represented in performing arts. Change is inevitable.
Directors: Katariina Räty and Mia Jaatinen
Choreography: Mia Jaatinen
Performers: Maria Autio, Sanni Kriikku, Hanna Ollikainen
Cinematographer: Axel Nordman
Sound: Ben Rogers
Johann Nyt! / performance for viola and dance / Helsinki Music Center Black Box 2018
Johann Nyt! explores different ways and levels of communication between movement and music. The piece has been built around the famous cello suites no 1 and 5 by Johann Sebastian Bach. In its development the process also led to questions regarding the divinity and spirituality of making art. We reflected on what in might have meant to Bach and what it means to us right now.
Director: Vilma Tihilä
Viola: Vuokko Lahtinen
Dance: Sanni Kriikku
Eloa-collective: Varjele / Cable Factory, Helsinki Festival 2017
Varjele is a dark intense dance performance about compassion and what happens when one loses it. The audience follows the shadows of the dancers inside a hexagonal shadow theatre. Is the audience there to be entertained or imprisoned? Tölöläb's improvised music mixes the clear sound of woodwind instruments with live electronics and thumping techno. Movement-wise, Varjele focuses on the connection between inner intention and the graphics of moving. It combines methods and imagery from sensory improvisation to theatrical embodiments of transformation and contemporary commercial dance.
The project is to be continued and reconstructed in 2020-2021.
Idea and artistic design: Heta Aho
Choreography: Sanni Kriikku
Performers: Mia Jaatinen, Ella Koikkalainen, Sade Risku, Samuli Emery, Marlon Moilanen, Pietari Vappula
Music: Tölöläb
Lights: Sofia Palillo
TICK (I miss you, pet) - site specific and dance film / 2017
In the toilet of a dance club, a young woman and a young man talk about whether everything between and around them has come to an end or not. The sound carries from the dance music playing on the other side of the wall into their heads and out again, turning into the music of their minds.
TICK is performed in toilets. It shows how verbal and non-verbal communication remains as meaningless stir between two people who used to be close to each other. TICK is disruptive and rumbling, but strives to show how an irrational human being is beautiful.
Performance, choreography: Sanni Kriikku, Marlon Moilanen
Visual design: Alexander Salvesen
Sound: Juhani Nuorvala
Text: Michael Baran
Instrumental Movement / DOCK11, Berlin, Joensuu City Theatre 2016
Dancer and flutist Sanni Kriikku explores working towards a bi-layered practice as a mover and a flutist. She combines these two things to find that dancing is creating visual sound and creating sound requires and triggers movement. The piece can be seen as a dance performance as well as a concert. The outcome is lyrical and dynamic but also leads the way to a new insight of the physicality of
playing and understanding an instrument.
Choreography, concept and performer: Sanni Kriikku
Director and mentor: Vilma Tihilä











Carried in Silence / 2023
Carried in Silence is a poetic film and a fragment of the relationship between a mother and a daughter. Using contemporary dance and classical music, the film deals with transgenerational trauma and the silent transition of emotions that are buried under the surface from one generation to the next. The film's music, which was composed in the 17th century by Isabella Leonarda – one of the few female composers of her era, also goes back generations.
Direction and production: Vilma Tihilä
Choreographer and assistant director: Sanni Kriikku
Cinematogrpaher and color specification: Perttu Inkilä
Editing: Sami Hokkanen
Sound design and mixing: Taavi Oramo
Set design: Markus Serala
Costume design: Monika Hartl
Music production and recording: Viktor Toikkanen
