With the Finnish National Ballet since 2012
When I was 5, I announced to my parents that I wanted to start dancing ballet. No one knows where the idea came from, but my own theory is might have been the children’s programme Pikku Kakkonen, which used to showcase different hobbies. We couldn’t find a beginners’ ballet class for boys to start with, so I was put in an acrobatics group for the first three years. I enrolled at the Ballet School of the Finnish National Opera and Ballet at the age of 8, but continued to study gymnastics up to a competitive level, too.
I was an athletic and hyperactive child with a compulsion for anything involving romping around. Besides school, I would spend all my waking hours doing exercise, and I would’ve wanted to keep all my hobbies. At some stage, however, I had to make a choice. I remember that, between 12 and 14 years of age, my days were booked up from 7 in the morning to 9 at night, first with school, then ballet, then gymnastics. That wasn’t very healthy I guess. I also played violin at a conservatory of music. I gave up the violin when I was 15, which I think meant not passing the final exam of the basic studies,