The opera & ballet season started for me with Seven Brothers by Marjo Kuusela. The plot of the novel was greatly simplified while the number of people, especially women, was increased, and a complety new scene added: a brothel in the small town of Hämeenlinna.

I went there believing I had seen it before in the 1980s, but apart from the "language of movement" it seemed completely strange, and I started doubting. My memory was of something very physical, energetic and masculine. This was tidy. This was "ballet."

The brothers were nearly indistinguishable from each other. Somehow one felt that the dancers didn't know what they were supposed to be doing, that they were just moving their arms and legs. Could it actually be because they were mostly foreign? Or has the time for this kind of choreography passed? It did have a certain 1970s feel. Or have we lost the connection to our forest ancestry?

It would probably have been OK, if I hadn't expected something more.