Arctic Ghost Train by RAF with Stellaris DansTeater

16 July 2024

Arctic Ghost Train by RAF with Stellaris DansTeater at Narvik Museum August 2 at 15.00, 2024

The Finnish accordionist Timo Kinnunen and the Irish harpist Anne-Marie O’Farrell has a unique approach to these two distinctive instruments. With a wide sonic range and new techniques, they put these more historic instruments into a whole new context. They blend traditional and modern, folk and early music melodies into themes of modern life, also by experimenting and improvising.

In this Narvik concert there is a special world premiere, a movement of “Sovende Nessie”. It is composed by Ruta Vitkauskaite (Lithuania/Scotland) and the work is linked to the RAF’s Loch Ness project Scotland in 2025. The duo is accompanied by the Finnish dance artist Titta Court, who with her unique and playful way reads the music, the place and the audience kinesthetically.

In Narvik, the trio performs with Stellaris DansTeater from Hammerfest. Halvdan Nedrejord composer, performer and educator from Karasjok will bring the Sami culture through her yoik and ethnic drumming and Solveig Leinan-Hermo from Hammerfest her almost 50 years of experience as a dance artist in the Barents Region/High North.

Rapid Art Force (RAF)

Is an experimental, interdisciplinary music-making ensemble consisting of highly qualified international artists from various fields such as music, theatre, dance, circus and visual arts. The RAF’s philosophy is performance and action in close contact with life’s various phenomena. Its way of thinking is driven by deepening its relationship with nature and defending and promoting courageous creativity and freedom. The RAF’s members (more than 20) mainly come from various European countries, Asia and America.

Moving Art Collaboratorium through Europe is one of the most important creative activities 2024-2027. The “Arctic Ghost Train” is part of that.

Founder and Artistic Director: Timo Kinnunen (Fin)

Artist presentations

Titta Court is a Northern Finnish dance artist who works as a dancer, choreographer, dance teacher, producer and mentor. Place, situation and audience, collaboration and improvisation are central to her work. She has produced works for a variety of public spaces, factories, hospitals, private homes, and nature, not to mention stages and arenas across Finland and the extensive Barents region and beyond. She is the artistic director of the northernmost dance collective RasaCollective together with dance artist Marjo Selin. In 2014-2015, she was nominated as the Community Dance Artist of the Year in Finland, and in 2020, the Union for Dance and Circus Artists Finland awarded Titta Court for her persistent work in contemporary dance. https://www.tittacourt.com/

Timo Kinnunen is one of the leading figures in Finnish creative contemporary music phenomena and international contemporary cultural innovation projects. He started his international career after winning the World Accordion Championship at the age of just sixteen. He is the founder of many surprising cultural projects and events in Finland and abroad such as the Time of Music Festival in Viitasaari, where e.g. John Cage and many leading composers and artists visited. He has premiered more than 350 solo, multi-art and chamber music works worldwide and has collaborated with composers such as Vinko Globokar, John Cage, Astor Piazzolla, Alvin Curran, Hans Joachim Hespos and many others. Kinnunen is also a remarkable improvisational artist. . He sees the world with a certain freedom, and his extensive background in music, sharp eyes, gentle and lively humor is refreshing to all his fellow musicians and different audiences. He is the artistic director of the Rapid Art Force (RAF). http://timokinnunen.eu/

Anne-Marie O’Farrell is a leading harpist of his generation, who has expanded the boundaries of what was considered possible on Irish or lever harp, and expanded the chromatic range of his repertoire. On the pedal harp, she brought the instrument into a new content, in contemporary and improvised music, by expanding the chamber repertoire through the composition, and with her continued transcription of the repertoire that was new to the pedal harp. As a composer, Anne=Marie is recognized for her immediate communication and just as at home writing for orchestra, choir and voice as she writes for multi-genre instrumentalists. She has won numerous composition awards, including the BBC Baroque Remixed Composition Competition, and has been awarded a PhD in composition from Queen’s University Belfast, where she studied with Piers Hellawell. https://annemarieofarrell.com/

Halvdan Nedrejord from Karasjok, the political and administrative center for Sami culture in Norway. He has worked as a performer and teacher in Sami joik, ethnic drumming, keyboard playing and composing since the early 70s. He has composed music and soundscapes for exhibitions, museums, theatres and dance performances, as well as educational material. In addition to being engaged in choirs with compositions and arrangements, he has worked as a church organist and composer of liturgy and hymns for the Church of Norway. He has toured Norway for national concerts and held around 3000 concerts. The collaboration with Stellaris Dance Theatre and Solveig Leinan-Hermo started in the 80s and has continued since then.

Solveig Leinan-Hermo (Norway) studied dance and pedagogy at the Norwegian National Opera Ballet where she had her first professional dance job, later she studied theatre, cultural studies, choreography, dance technique and management at college and university. The founding of Stellaris Dance Theatre in 1980 formed the basis for professional dance activities in Northern Norway, more specifically the Barents Region/High North, and contributed to the emergence of dance as an art form locally, nationally and internationally. She worked to establish both DanseFestival Barents and Dansearena in the north of Hammerfest, and was one of the founders of the Forum for North Norwegian Dance Artists (FnnD). In 2025, she celebrates 50 years as a dance artist and 45 years with Stellaris Dance Theatre. www.stellaris.no

She has worked with Halvdan Nedrejord since the 80s.

 Stellaris Dance Theatre (SD) is a professional independent dance company based in Hammerfest, which mainly works and tours in the Barents Region/High North. The company was established in 1980 and is the oldest independent dance company in Norway, and probably the northernmost of its kind.

SD has placed great emphasis on cultural exchange, and currently collaborates with various professional artists, institutions and companies in the Barents region (Norway, Russia, Sweden, Finland), the Baltic States (Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania) and Aotearoa New Zealand.

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