Kojehuone (building 8)
Interview with Petri Ekqvist:
"I got to know Suvilahti when Circus Helsinki moved here from the Konepaja area in Vallila in 2013. I am primarily a circus artist and dancer. I travelled round Europe with the NoFit State Circus for four years. After a life on the road I wondered what else I could do as well as circus, and I went to massage school.
I think it was 2018 when I ended up as a tenant in Suvilahti, when Cirko's producer Jarkko Lehmus told me there was a space available in the Kojehuone building. I had a massage parlour called Hieromo for business customers and I thought it would be good to have somewhere people could come to if massages couldn’t be arranged in their company’s own premises.
Circus gigs and wellness coaching
I used to do a lot of gigs for companies, especially Chinese pole, where I climb on to a suspended pole and swing there. Now I mostly do massage and also nutritional and physical coaching. I advise how to promote recovery by other means apart from massage.
As well as Hieromo, I have a new company, ArtSport. Here various sub-areas of wellness coaching come together. I also write a blog on the subject on ArtSport’s website. I aim to bring intuitive ways of monitoring yourself from the field of art to coaching. People are often a bit lost when it comes to knowing their limits. For example, they don’t notice before they are overtrained. Or they don’t eat when they are hungry, instead they eat while watching a movie, for example, or when they are stressed.
Suvilahti is easy to get to
I have always liked the area. Even when there was just a hole in the ground where the Redi shopping centre is now! I have walked a lot on the shoreline nearby. It’s great that Mustikkamaa is so close by too. I would like to get Kalasatama residents as my customers.
It's easy to get to Suvilahti from all directions. You can get here by metro from east and west, and it’s easy to get here from the north too. It’s easier to get here than to Jätkäsaari, say.
Festivals are sure to be held here in future too. When the Flow Festival is here, for example, it’s very difficult for customers to get to my premises. But it’s great that I can be here throughout the festival. I could also be marketing my business somehow when the festival is on and there are tens of thousands of people here.
At one point I was operating out of Technopolis, and it felt alien. People would roll their eyes when I said I was a circus artist. I need surroundings where the people are a bit off the wall perhaps and don’t always work from nine to five.
One thing is that there are no open performance areas. This is because the performer inside me always wants to get out on stage, and it would be great if there was an open stage here!"
In summer 2021. Photo: Anni Sundell.