Choreography: Virpi Pahkinen
Music: Jim O'Leary
Costume designers: Virpi Pahkinen
Premiere: 27.04.2003
Duration: 20 minutes


“Zefirum” is a development of Virpi Pahkinen’s interest in the Buddhist culture, supplementing it with new elements stemming from the Arab numeric tradition.

“The origin of the word ‘zero’: sanskrit ‘ςunya’ means ‘empty’, the number ‘zero’ is marked with a small circle (why a circle? No-one really knows why...). Translated to Arabic, ‘ςunya’ becomes ‘sifr’, which in turn translated to Italian gives us ‘zéfiro’. And then from ‘zéfiro’ to ‘zéro’.”
Peter Ström, “L’Histoire des Nombres"