Selkie – The Seal Woman
14.6.2025
14.00 - 15.00
Culture House Laikku, Music hall, Keskustori 4, 33100 Tampere
Selkie – The Seal Woman features two stories about crossing boundaries, about corrective action, about understanding, about accepting reality and, finally, about forgiveness.
Ruamjai choir's performance Selkie – The Seal Woman features two stories about crossing boundaries, about corrective action, about understanding, about accepting reality and, finally, about forgiveness.
The underlying narrative is an ancient tale from the shores of the northern ocean. A fisherman in the cold north sees silver-speckled seal women dancing on a rock at night. He steals one of the seal pelts and thus captures one of the selkies to be his wife. He promises to give back her seal pelt when seven summers have passed. The couple have a son, Ooruk, who despite his father’s protestations eventually helps his mother return to the sea and thus learns the connection between the two worlds.
Interspersed with this tale are composer Tellu Turkka’s own diary entries from the period 2011–2018 about her devastating divorce and struggle to survive a serious illness. The work has nine movements and a duration of about 60 minutes.
Admission is free, but pre-registration is required. Pre-registration will open in May.