Biography
Annukka Pykäläinen was born in 1965 in Ylöjärvi, Finland. Since graduating in 1989 within the Fashion and Clothing Design programme, she has worked as a freelance costume and set designer in Finland and Sweden. Her work has developed in a wide area of performing arts, including theatre, television, film and dance, and her years of experience in these fields have given her the possibility to design both costumes and sets for classical productions, new drama, opera, ballet and modern dance. The productions in which she has participated have been staged in small independent theatre groups, as well as in large theatres, opera and ballet companies. Among the most important are her designs for world premieres of Finnish new drama such as Broken Heart Story (Q-theatre, Finland, 2011), What Are the Big Boys Made From? (Finnish National Theatre, 2011) and Born to Lahti (Lahti City Theatre, 2011). Her collaborations in 7 Brothers (TTT, Finland, 2008), in the environmental performance Life and Death (Oulu City Theatre, 2006) and Equus (Vaasa City Theatre, 2001) gained acclaim as modern, visual and all-encompassing designs. La Bayadère is the second production in which she has created sets in collaboration with the choreographer Javier Torres, the first being the successful full-length ballet The Beauty and the Beast, staged by the Finnish National Ballet in February 2014. She is also a board member of Q-theatre, which specialises in Finnish new drama, and a co-producer of the Baltic Circle International Contemporary Theatre Festival. As a teacher she has guest-lectured at the Finnish Theatre Academy.