With the Finnish National Ballet since 2002
I started to dance very early on at home in front of the TV so that my parents wouldn’t just watch programmes but rather pay attention to me. I’d pick a bunch of clothes, change into one outfit after another, and dance. Our laundry basket was full of my clothes every day, as whenever I had a new inspiration, I would put the dress I’d worn for the previous dance into the wash. I related very strongly to different stories then, and in a way I still continue the same dress-up games.
The former dancer and ballet teacher of the Finnish National Ballet, Merja Tuohimaa-Puurtinen, lived close by, so together with her daughter Silja, who was my age, I went to her ballet classes for a year. I applied and was accepted to the Ballet School of the Finnish National Opera and Ballet when I was 8. I attended the school for 10 years, as half way through my studies, a curriculum revamp delayed my graduation.
I got my first pointe shoes at the Ballet School of the Finnish National Opera and Ballet after studying just around half a year. There’s a photo in which I balance on pointe in totally unmodified shoes, in which you can barely stand up. Now I always think about what I could’ve done to those shoes to make things easier: soften them with a hammer and bend the soles. But in that photo, I stand with my chest out, so proud of the fact that I’m wearing pointe shoes.