Kulturnyt.net ⊂ Saturday 6'th of June 2026 ∴ Uge 23
Kulturnyt views from and reviews of theatre, dance and other performing arts in Aarhus, Denmark
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★★★★★Review of Flying Superkids, 2026
Dazzling powerful gymnastic show from Flying Superkids
25. maj 2026.Kulturnyt, Ambiorn Happy
The sun gleams in the paintwork as hundreds of cars swerve off the road and park in the field, below the enormous tent in the background. It's summer in Denmark, the children are happy. Inside the fence there are trampolines and hula hoops, stalls with food and soda. Life and happy days.
Flying Superkids is a tribute to the body's acrobatic abilities. In many ways, the show is like a circus. You have to start early and train hard. There are no keyboard shortcuts or secret cheat codes.
On the other hand, there is support when the children begin training as super gymnasts in Aarhus. It is difficult, and it can be scary.
Skill comes from the courage in the chest. The afternoon you start as a new vaulting gymnast, you meet the wall - "No, I can't".
- Not yet!
It takes a lot of training, and a good mood, to become good at vaulting gymnastics.
Here are some of the jumps that you can experience at the Flying Superkids show:
Flic-flack – Backward handspring, a classic and frequently used connecting element.
Front handspring – Powerful forward jump with a start from two legs (often as a build-up to larger jumps).
Arabian somersault – Forward somersault with a half twist.
Salto (or double somersault) – Backward or forward flip in the air, often double or triple.
Handspring – Forward handspring.
Flyspring – Forward jump with a combined take-off (similar to a forward flip-flop variant).
Whip back (or whip somersault) – Fast backward somersault in a stretched position, used in tumbling series.
Tumbling series – Continuous series of jumps and flips at a high tempo.
Check out the video clips Kulturnyt took from the show, while we were sitting really well and in great company with 1,200 happy people in the tent. Thanks for the experience. It was excellent.
Flying Superkids
Show review
Photo: Miklos Szabo★★★★★Review 'Frost', Musikhuset Aarhus
Frost at Musikhuset makes grown men cry
8. april 2026.Kulturnyt, Ambiorn Happy
We are 1,500 people in the auditorium. Some of us are princesses, escorted by dad, aunt or mum. We’re off on an adventure at Musikhuset Aarhus – Disney’s Frost, The Musical, served up in a Nordic style.
The princesses in the auditorium are dressed up, eating sweets, and kicking me in the back. There’s something particularly enchanting about experiencing children’s theatre together with children. The fathers behind us look so happy to be taking their daughters on this trip – into the fairy tale.
Frost is a very long performance when you’re 4–5 years old. But it actually works fine. The children sit on cushions so they can see over the heads of the adults. Perfect. The men in the hall relax and enjoy themselves while their daughters munch wine gums and follow the story on stage.
The story is the one you know from the film – but much less Broadway. In this Vesturport version there’s more Nordic folklore and mythology. Princess Anna is a quick-witted girl with plenty of spirit, full of life and vitality, and with a real longing for a proper man!
Together with her sister Elsa, Anna has lived alone in the castle for many years, but now her sister Elsa is to become queen. Their parents are dead, and Elsa is known for having a crazy temper that can make people collapse with frostbite.
People are streaming into the house to celebrate the coronation of the new queen. Anna steps out of her loneliness and meets a real man for the first time: Prince Hans! He’s handsome, and she wants to marry him – preferably today rather than tomorrow.
But her sister says no. In fact she gets so angry with Anna that she unleashes her freezing magic over the entire kingdom, turning it into winter. Elsa runs away up into the mountains, where she lives in the company of the snowman Olaf – a little happy bundle of snow that Elsa has brought to life.
And now it gets exciting. Anna searches the mountains for her sister, but first finds Kristoffer and his sweet reindeer. The real adventure begins. Sven the Reindeer – played perfectly by Mads Panik Wilfred Steen – with long forelegs that make him look completely lifelike. They also meet the cheerful snowman Olaf, brilliantly performed by puppeteer Diluckshan Jeyaratnam, who also provides the snowman’s voice.
Ahead of Kristoffer and Anna lie many challenges: yet another outburst from sister Elsa, a bunch of crazy men and women with scythes and flails gathered to kill Elsa, betrayal and deceit, and finally – Princess Anna has got an ice splinter in her heart. She is freezing – only death’s cold embrace awaits her.
Unless…! Unless they manage to find true love!
The scenography is raw and Nordic, top class. The actors can really sing. The music is pompous and bombastic – it sounds like Icelandic volcanoes rumbling and steaming as they meet Hollywood’s Rodgers & Hammerstein and some verses from a Swedish Abba blackbird.
But the biggest thing you have to experience for yourself. Your children manage an incredible number of minutes with focus, and suddenly you realise the story has touched you so deeply that you have to sniff quickly and wipe a few tears from your cheeks.
Thank you to Vesturport for the experience, and thank you to Musikhuset in Aarhus. A superb production in the Nordic vein – Vikings and full-of-life men and women. Brilliant!
Frost, by Disney Theatrical Productions
The artistic team, Vesturport Iceland
Show review
Photo: Mikkel Vognæs★★★★Review 'When the Enemy Comes', Teater Katapult
New Danish Drama: Sperm and Rubble, Heat-Seeking Sperm Cells, Cumshot Orgasms in the Porn Machine, and a Micro-Pistol
4. april 2026.Kulturnyt, Ambiorn Happy
Review of 'When the Enemy Comes': I like sex and war. Sex because it’s my expression of love. War because it’s my way of standing up for myself when the enemy invades my country. But mixing the two?
I have to be honest: 'When the Enemy Comes' is an okay play because it throbs with the sexual rhythms of our time and matches the image of headless naked chickens running around. The piece is very violent, extremely vulgar, absurd without meaning – a stew where everyone contributes a squirt from their crotch, and absolutely no one wants to be the chef.
That’s why I suggest it should be translated into German or Spanish. Because the play is different, and Germans and Spaniards have a slightly higher tolerance for new drama.
But in a Danish context it tastes to me like a piece of smørrebrød with way too much pussy juice and sperm, garnished with gunpowder and bullets. The taste is too weird for me personally. Way too far from the vet’s late-night snack.
Luckily, the young audience is thrilled!
That’s why there is quality in 'When the Enemy Comes'. The young audience thinks the play is funny. The youngsters laugh at “naughty words” – I won’t list them – a bare male ass shocks them so hard the ceiling is about to fall on their heads. They are provoked by the Nazi figure on stage who behaves like shit.
The young people like the play – on their own terms. And that is quality: that someone actually likes the art you make, even if other balder men dream of rye bread with liver pâté.
Imagine 2 men and a woman living in a basement while war is raging, and then they are discovered by a sadistic officer hunting for new bodies for the battlefield.
Everything about war is talked about as sex. Defeat at the front is “impotence”. Bombs and missiles are “cumshot orgasms”. Pistols are “dicks”.
And everything about sex is talked about as war. Desire is “attack me”. Pregnancy is “siege of the enemy”. The body is “the casing”.
In the play the oppressed are abused by the officer (“Supreme Ass-Licker”) and his recruit (“the Dog”). It takes a while for them to get killed – until the girl in the group gives the officer’s micro-pistol a blowjob.
How the absurd antics end, you’ll have to experience for yourself. But I can reveal that there is no real story – and that the audience doesn’t mind. The play is a fragmentary scene-concert with clips of hardcore OnlyFans meeting National Socialist Hitler’s hysterical temperament, with a taste of downfall and resistance. A taste of iron in the air from the good use of stage blood.
Thanks to the team behind 'When the Enemy Comes', and thanks to Jonas Thorsted Frederiksen for writing absurdly about the two most important things in life: love and standing up for yourself. It was a good experience. Now I’m going to the fridge for that liver pâté.
When the Enemy Comes
Teater review
Photo: Henrik Ohsten★★★★Review 'My father can fly', Livingstone's Cabinet at Teatret Svalegangen
Her father was crazy, but then he hanged himself
23. marts 2026.Kulturnyt, Ambiorn Happy
A fine little piece about the director’s father who was crazy, and he commits suicide. So there she stood,
Nina Kareis’ father was sometimes a fantastic character who shouted “shit and piss” in church, and at other times he was sectioned and given electroshock treatment. He loved his green Saab 96 (two of them), and he bought himself a bow and arrow. I tell you, the audience was scared when he aimed the bow at us and fumbled with the arrow. Our row in the auditorium at Teatret Svalegangen was right in the line of fire – genuinely frightening.
Much of Nina’s childhood was shaped by this whimsical father with a huge imagination. He believed you could buy a bottle-green fibreglass boat and sail around Denmark with your daughter, so that’s exactly what he did.
You will love the set design – go and see the show – it forms part of the portrait of the girl’s father, the girl who is now an adult director. A simple wooden crate stands on stage, and this crate is deconstructed as the father’s manic-depressive story is painted before us. Graphically beautiful and it adds real context to the piece.
You will also love the music. It is Pete Livingstone who creates the moods and melodies. Sad, happy, Bob Dylan-esque, classical – spiced with well-chosen suspense effects. Extremely impressive work by Livingstone; he can play music on all instruments – violin, piano, guitar, synth – a great musician, in my opinion. His work perfectly suits the piece and frames the portrait of the mad father.
The acting is a monologue in the form of a voice-over, where the performers provide bodies and movements to what is being told. Original and absurdly effective. The actors wear masks created by Julie Forchhammer. There are bears, doves, crocodiles, herrings and so on. Absurd and very well executed.
My Father Can Fly based on an idea by
Teater review
Photo: André Hansen★★★★★Review 'Dancing on my own', Holstebro Dansekompagni at Aarhus Theatre
They Find the Pulse on Love's Dance Floor
12. marts 2026.Kulturnyt, Lita Domino
Review of 'Dancing on my own', Holstebro Dansekompagni: Do you know the pop singer and artist Robyn? The pulse in her music is heavy - the pounding bass drum creates a direct connection to the heartbeat. Robyn's voice floats in the air like a joyful skylark hovering freely over the fields.
The contrast between earth and sky. This is the soundscape of the performance 'Dancing on my own', currently playing at Aarhus Teater. The choreography mirrors the same contrast: heavy earth and soaring skylark. The dance performance 'Dancing on my own' is a 5-star experience.
In 'Dancing on my own', we encounter small tableaux in the winding corners of love. We step into an apartment: the kitchen – the bathroom – the bedroom. We meet the people - six dancers from Holstebro Dansekompagni, each portraying different facets of love.
In the dramaturgy, the performers recount tiny moments that people experience together in the name of love. The dancers express tantalizing longing when they circle alone in the apartment's little merry-go-round, waiting for their chosen one to find the door to their chamber.
We see two people crossing paths in a conversational kitchen, yet missing each other entirely. The newly enamored couple who meet in kisses on the edge of the bed one moment, and leave each other the next. The soft duvet on the bed becomes unbearable to lie alone in, abandoned, and the closed door between them is hard and opaque.
We meet couples sharing everyday life - the bathtub as a happy arena where they draw closer to themselves and each other in small, private moments. Heated romances, but also broken hearts when love is no longer returned.
The performance 'Dancing on my own' has a concrete look in its set design and in its small dramatic scenes from love life. I really like that. Just like Robyn's music in the show, the concrete tableaux form the grounding earth of the piece, while the emotions and abstractions in the dancers become the skylark hovering above it all.
I particularly loved the last 20 minutes of the piece, where - in my eyes - the dancers paid tribute to altruistic love. The dance floor turned into a waving sea. Each performer falls in and out of kisses, and I got the sense that the dancers' bodies became heartbeats in love's ocean.
Dancing on my own
Dans review
★★★★★Review 'A Wobbly Waltz', Bora Bora in Aarhus
Don Gnu delivers world-class bromance!
6. marts 2026.Kulturnyt, Ambiorn Happy
Hold up! I'm completely hooked on Don Gnu's new bromance. It's modern as hell with its masculine humor, friendship, and slapstick. 'Slinger i valsen – A Wobbly Waltz' is Bora Bora's latest answer to the more traditional gender-focused trends. The show celebrates three straight guys' non-sexual friendship, jealousy, competition, and real feelings through physical, hilarious theatre. Five stars, hands down. Man, this is good!
On the European scene, Don Gnu is already top-tier, and this Aarhus-based dance company tours the world with its masculine performances. In this new piece 'Slinger i valsen – A Wobbly Waltz', three men take the stage.
Quick news flash: We're in Hollywood, 1910. Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy, and Charlie Chaplin cross paths. It's the silent film era. Slapstick, laughs, masculine love between men – Laurel and Hardy were like brothers their whole lives – and competition between Chaplin's little Tramp and the Laurel & Hardy duo.
Three real men with humor, battling with and against each other on the Bora Bora stage. They dance. They box. They take flight. They're jealous of each other. They try to impress and outdo one another. Just like guys do. It's funny. It's...
...Yeah, damn it, it's actually moving, man! Go see it for yourself – premiere tomorrow Saturday, and tickets are selling out fast. (Kulturnyt is non-profit and ad-free; we get zero kickbacks or anything – this is just honest: go see it!)
There are flashing lights in the show. And if you're feeling suicidal, maybe depressed, lonely, abandoned, and your dog just died – because they always do at the worst possible time – here's another heads-up: 'Slinger i valsen - A Wobbly Waltz' will guaranteed make you happy! I got so damn happy I started crying at the end of the story. Seriously! Men's friendship, humor, masculinity, and straight-up hetero love for each other – it's beautiful to watch.
Thanks to Don Gnu for the bromance, thanks to Bora Bora for bringing international physical theatre about men to Aarhus, and a special shout-out to you who actually read all the way down to this final full stop :) Man, that's impressive.
Slinger i valsen – A Wobbly Waltz, by Don Gnu
Performance review
Image: Niall Walker★★★★★Review 'Flora - What I'm Here For' at Teater Katapult in Aarhus
I Hurt in My System – Is There a Nurse Present?
4. marts 2026.Kulturnyt, Lita Domino
Review of 'Flora' at Teater Katapult: Something has gone wrong. The patient admitted to room 22, a young woman, was supposed to be discharged from the hospital, but it turns out she has been misdiagnosed. In reality, she has a brain tumour and is far from well. The test results have been mixed up. The firefighter is the skilled and authentic nurse Flora. The play 'Flora' offers a critical look into the nooks and crannies of the healthcare system. An evening shift that reveals a system's total lack of humanity, forcing the nurse Flora to act against her instincts. A socially critical production worthy of 5 stars.
We encounter tableaux from the hospital world. She is young – the nurse Flora. She stands in her white uniform with warm red cheeks. Behind her on stage sit four actors who, through microphones, play Flora's colleagues and patients as she meets them during an ordinary evening at the hospital. The play 'Flora' provides a realistic insight into a 'combat situation' in hospitals, where understaffing and stress are constant realities that must be survived. The lines fly like wildfires, constantly demanding Flora's firefighting, and the audience experiences a person pushed beyond her own limits.
You know the story of Florence Nightingale. The English nurse-reformer (1820-1910) who tirelessly nursed war victims during the Crimean War.
This Florence set the bar high for subsequent nurses. The production 'Flora' checks in on her role in our time. How are nurses doing today?
There is still a need for these holy warriors in white uniforms. Who will make the sacrifice so the lady in room 33 can have her pillow adjusted, her anxiety eased, or encounter some kindness? Caring for wounds and alleviating suffering easily becomes a holy war if the system lacks humanity towards its own staff.
What happens when the rearguard of this holy war fails to show up in the battle? A hospital system that aims to alleviate suffering begins to compromise its own humanity.
In the story, errors arise, and the young woman has her data switched. Nurse Flora's greatest tool is the present, attentive encounter with the patient, but it becomes a contradictory situation when she can no longer act in accordance with her own duty. For Flora, the burden becomes too heavy to bear.
Through its realism, the production has examined the narrative of the self-sacrificing nurse. The one we so eagerly want to don a cape and save us from vomit and poor morals – but who sees the human being in her?
Thank you to 'Flora' and everyone who knitted this theatre piece together at Teater Katapult.
Flora - What I'm Here For
Director Matthew Lenton
Writer Josephine Eusebius
Set Designer Mai Katsume
Lighting Designer Simon Wilkinson
Composer & Sound Designer Mark Melville
Associate Director Ben Standish
Text Dramaturg Rikke Frigast Jakobsen
Production Manager (VP) Alisdair Low
Production Manager (Katapult) Louise Christiansen
Technical Manager Becky Kirkness
Sound Technician Jens Mønsted
Sound Technician & Stage Manager Niels Thøgersen
Stage Manager & Subtitle Operator Daniel Langgaard
Assistant Stage Manager Gillian Richards
Wardrobe Supervisor Ingeborg Thormann
Support Technician Søren Birk Malling
Executive Producer (VP) Severine Wyper
Executive Producer (Katapult) Torben Dahl
Producer Eleanor Scott
Produced by Teater Katapult & Vanishing Point.
Teater review
Photo: Montgomery★★★★Review of 'The Job', Teatret Svalegangen
See 'The Job' and Find Out If You're an Aluminum Pot or a Fragile Coffee Cup
14. februar 2026.Kulturnyt, Ambiorn Happy
Review of 'The Job' at Teatret Svalegangen: Problematic. We humans are fascinated by watching people get killed. I don't get it. The play 'The Job' at Teatret Svalegangen explores how we are affected by seeing people executed on the internet, sexually abused, cut with shards of glass, and so on. The consequence is PTSD for the sensitive porcelain souls, or indifference and laughter from the tougher aluminum pots. Make your own choice: Are you porcelain or aluminum? 'The Job' deserves 4 stars. I myself am mostly a chipped coffee cup in fragile porcelain. Ha!
The best thing about the play - directed by
We are in the psychologist's office. The young woman Mia - played with speed and precision by Rosemarie Mosbæk - has seen too many brutal videos in her job as a content moderator on a social media platform. It has given her PTSD.
Now she is in session with the psychologist - played warmly and credibly by Erik Viinberg - trying to get "well" again.
The large projection behind the two characters reflects some of the thought processes, image storms, and anxiety that Mia carries inside her. It's a beautiful and effective visual contribution to the story, in a scenography created by Nick Pedersen.
Should we ban images on the internet of people being abused? To protect advertisers, and to protect fragile souls like me?
No, not for my sake, because images don't kill. And where would we draw the line? Have you seen an MMA gladiator fight? Or 1,000 men with Bonnie Blue in one day. The world is full of cruelties.
What if we just banned cruelty altogether?
But it is problematic, the images we see. Maybe we should ban them? Images of accidents, war, assaults, and so on. We become sick in the soul from watching them, because we can't do anything about it. Mia has gone mad in the play because she has seen people being mistreated without being able to save them.
But what about the psychologist? Is he actually mad too, or an unpleasant, malevolent person? Does the psychologist resemble a man Mia has seen online, one who raped his own children? Is there something about the earlobe and his dialect?
Experience it for yourself. A thriller that unfolds between Mia and the psychologist. He is old and experienced. She is young and has a gun.
Thanks for the experience. It was good. Go see the play yourself, and check if you're made of porcelain.
The Job by Max Wolf Friedlich
Teater review
Photo: Lars Kjær Dideriksen, Thomas Zamolo★★★★★★Review 'Tectonic', Bora Bora, Aarhus
A dancer moves energy and creates earthquakes
5. februar 2026.Kulturnyt, Lita Domino
Review of 'Tectonic' at Bora Bora in Aarhus: The underworld is rolling. Stones and earth make movements. Repetitions. Tonight I am in the company of a fusion. Like a jazz pianist, the artist
The performance 'Tectonic' at Bora Bora in Aarhus is an energetic and intense experience. An encounter with the Earth’s inner core and the pulsating influence of energy on the physical layers – tonight on a stage floor in Aarhus. The performance 'Tectonic' is a 6-star experience.
The elements are in motion. An artist has set out to shake the Earth and create fusion. Everything has a consequence, as when tectonic plates collide and create friction. In the work 'Tectonic', the performer describes the enormous energy through his movements as a dancer and the interplay with light and the rolling soundscape from the Earth’s interior.
His dance is intense. He repeats body rolls on the floor that gradually become larger and larger – from lying down to standing upright on the floor. Rolls back and repeats. The sound underpins the dance with a vibrating resonance from the depths of the Earth.
I see him slowly retreating on stage, as if moving down into the underworld. Here the light and soundscape change – now like a sound from a dripstone cave. He pulls his shirt over his head and begins to move across the ground. Visually, I get the sensation of the figure as an amoeba – evolved through the power of water.
I experience a soundscape of small releases of pulsating air currents. The light shifts to a more glowing experience in orange and green tones. The dance also changes, now into a more pulsating movement. I get the feeling of flames. Arms rhythmically moving out from the body, legs dancing with small jolts.
In the next moment, the light shines in beams. Through light and smoke machines, I get the sensation of landscapes. I enjoy the dance that becomes more and more energetic and reaches its most intense level before it explodes as a consequence of the force of acceleration.
The performance 'Tectonic' is a beautiful universe of earth and energy. A visual and intense work that I am grateful to have experienced. To the team behind it, I say thank you, and to Bora Bora for inviting us in.
Tectonic
Dans review
Photo: Jubal Battisti & Adam Munnings★★★★Review of 'Remachine', Jefta van Dinther at Bora Bora in Aarhus
Life is 78 and a half square meters large, and it spins around
21. januar 2026.Kulturnyt, Ambiorn Happy
The wind smacks flat-handed into my head. Again and again. Pitch-black evening in Aarhus. Streetlights struggle to keep their cones of light afloat. Police cars race past with blue flashes slicing into the night. People hunch into their dark shadows. It’s cold. Again. My legs repeat themselves. Stumbling forward to get home to warmth.
That’s exactly what life feels like in the work 'Remachine' at Bora Bora in Aarhus. Choreography by Jefta van Dinther. A performance worth 4 stars - and unsuitable for anyone with a leaning toward depression.
You’re born, you die. But between those two points lie so many damn tedious days. Thousands of repetitions.
The sun rises, it sets, 25,000 times. Your heart beats 2.5 billion times. I just spent 2,520 of mine in the big hall at Bora Bora. No idea if I’ll ever get them back?
And what about those 2,520 heartbeats the other day in the ER waiting room? And the 3,000 on the light rail out toward Ryomgaard? Living is expensive. Thousands of heartbeats flake off us, just to uncover a handful of fun and happy ones.
Darkness. Light creeps in. A giant revolving stage, about 10 meters in diameter, turns endlessly with 5 dancers perched on its rim. They sing mournfully to a 16-bar loop repeating forever. It’s morning in life. Over the next eleven and a half minutes the dancers fight their way up onto the platform. Then they lie there twitching—like newborns in life, or like people jolted awake in panic because they’re late for work.
Through the piece, while singing along to techno’s endless repeats, the dancers show how we live in the grooves of a vinyl record. So we work hard. And we think: “Look how diligent and capable I am.” And everyone else thinks the same. We’re copies of each other. Individuals moving in the same direction like one huge school of fish.
Fantastic individuals, just like everyone else. Yeah, fuck, that’s pretty depressing, I think.
'Remachine' is carried by hypnotic music, the turning stage, the dancers’ repetitions. No smiles here, no funny Chaplin-like moves from Modern Times’ feeding machine. Hopelessness. Existence cynically gnawing on our bones, draining our strength.
In the end we grow old. Maybe we’re born again? That’s it.
Thanks for the experience. Principally, I still think my life is better than this. But it’s true, isn’t it? Every morning the same: “Did you sleep well?” Coffee. Work. Night pours over us. Good night.
Quick repeat summary: 'Remachine', 4 stars, original scenography, hypnotic music and singing, decent choreography, good lighting. And if you’re already depressed, keep the number for the Lifeline in your back pocket. You’ll be glad you did.
Damn! Where the hell did I put that number?
Remachine
Photo and film: Jubal Battisti, Elin Berge
Production management: Uta Engel, Romy Hansford-Gerber
Dans review
Photo: Øystein Haara★★★★★★Review of 'Cancel Bertha - Carte Blanche', on Bora Bora in Denmark
14 Dancers Teach Me the Difference: I Love Iterations More
13. november 2025.Kulturnyt, Ambiorn Happy
Review of 'Cancel Bertha - Carte Blanche' at Bora Bora: I love the grotesque performance that rolls imposingly back and forth across the floor between the tall walls of Bora Bora. It is like a gigantic Flemish wave of repetitions, created by the Belgian Jan Martens. Performed by 14 Norwegian dancers. In the middle of the stage floor, the image of a sleeping dog, 6 x 8 metres. The dancers are dressed in reflective costumes created by Indrani Balgobin, making them resemble athletic, shimmering figures in a sporty, futuristic universe. The dance performance is an experience worthy of 6 stars.
Huha, that was tough. You know, just because caviar is expensive and sought-after doesn’t necessarily make it my cup of tea. Privately you must understand, this reviewer never went to school, and he loves a good story.
So, do you get it? Cancel Bertha is huge shovelfuls of caviar, and me with my mouth shut just dreaming of a hotdog, maybe a bit of cancan and striptease.
Or the other way round. This review might taste a little like a vegan’s experience of a hotdog, or like a jigsaw puzzle box depicting a dumb man’s experience of an intellectual work. But I mean what I say. Hang on! By reading further, you have given consent.
A woman in a reflective leotard enters the stage. She makes movements, rolls around on the floor, repeats poses, half dance steps, gets on all fours like a dog sticking its bum in the air. Do you understand? Then she repeats herself until a bearded man enters the stage.
The man shows off his strong forearms. He has tattoos. Swings his arms around, drops to his knees, stands up. Repeats himself.
A couple in reflective costumes enter the stage. The man strips naked except for a pair of reflective Speedo-style briefs. Together with the woman he makes movements in sync, drops to his knees, gets on all fours together like two dogs.
And so it continues. Every time new dancers enter the stage, the others continue their repetitions. In the end it is a whole gaming machine filled with gears and glittering costumes that repeat themselves in a grand geometric choreography with a dash of mathematics.
Repetitions. Repetitions. This is the picture of the dreadful life of repetition. At work. In yourself. In your legs when you walk, and in your arms when you eat. Life is a repetition.
Repetition without iteration. There are two concepts for the state that 'Carte Blanche' portrays: Death without development, or simply a soulless robot.
Is this what modern man has become? Soulless, or with a mechanical movement pattern that any AI robot today can already perform much better than the Norwegian dancers?
Most of Europe – especially in Norway and Belgium – is thrilled with 'Cancel Bertha'. I understand the fascination with the complicated choreographies that weave the dancers’ movements together into huge swirling rivers of repetition.
It is exactly reminiscent of workers picking cotton or packing goods from China into cardboard boxes all day long in a huge warehouse. The movements are empty, but efficient.
The sound also contains repetitions. A woman sings “We have change of the moon” with guitar accompaniment. This line is repeated about 100 times. Then there is a metronome at 180 BPM that pounds my ear for about a quarter of an hour. And finally, when the repetitions are about to ebb away, a song about “When we get home from work”, maybe 80 times.
Yes, I got a bit seasick from the repetitions. I love iterations, all people do. No one loves repetitions. So thank you for the experience, I love that Jan Martens makes us aware of the difference between repetition and iteration.
The latter is fruitful, the former is barren. Stillborn already before the sun rises.
Thanks to the 14 Norwegian dancers, Jan Martens, Carte Blanche, and to Bora Bora for inviting great European dance art to Aarhus. Now I need a hotdog.
Cancel Bertha - Carte Blanche by Jan Martens
Dans review
★★★★Review: 'Death is Not the End', by Andreas Constantinou
A work of art for those who survived
31. oktober 2025.Kulturnyt, Ambiorn Happy
When my son died, I bought a spade in Brugsen and buried him in the forest. I remember that now, as we sit in a church in the middle of Aarhus, 60 people at the end of the day. No one is crying yet, but we will. The performance "Death is Not the End" is about the dead. 6 people tell private stories about the time they met death. Death of their daughter. Or they lost their husband. Their burden, their suffering. Their mother. We experience a performance about the dead, told by those who survived, those who are still here. Created by
Mostly, anyway. We are sad about it. My grandmother died. I bought a red rose and threw it down on the lid of her coffin at the bottom of her grave. Afterwards we had coffee and cake.
This performance starts specifically inside a small chapel at the Church of Our Lady. Pointed vaulted ceilings decorated with pink, violet and orange along the edges. An altar. Wall paintings. 6 people. Stories about death.
Next we go out into the monastery courtyard. It is dark. We all get a black umbrella (as is appropriate for funerals) and walk around the courtyard and into the main church.
The atmosphere is sacred. (Yes!) We sit in the booths and the 6 people tell several stories, all the way up to the altar. We move, and it moves us. Finally, large parts of the audience are invited up to the altar. Those who told about the dead disappear, and then the audience stands next in line.
We do not get out of here without feeling the sadness that people die. And in the end we die ourselves, but without crying about it. That job is for the others to take.
I love talking about death. It makes me happy. Like, rather the others than me? Is that wrong? Maybe. The audience around me is moved, and many cry. I don't.
Then my brother died, and I dressed him in his last set of clothes, put him in the coffin. Then Jan died. Shot his head off with a hunting rifle (the day after I told him about life's beauty). Then Anni died, in Fitness World, of an aneurysm, and I read about it on Facebook. Then a craftsman in Vamdrup died, thrown out through the windshield of his van, bleeding from his ears while I held his head and the ambulance howled in the distance on its way towards us. Then my business associate died, and I bought him flowers. Then my mother died, I carried her from the church to the cemetery and lowered her into the grave. Then...
It's obviously something we have to get used to. Very annoying.
Thank you for the experience Andreas Constantinou, it was good. As a nice period to your other works in the series "The Grief Work Series", where in "Death is Not the End" you create a work of art out of everyday deaths, told by those who survived.
Next we step out into Aarhus, out of the church. It is All Saints' Eve. The city is filled with horror and fear, and young girls in hot pants, bare legs and stilettos. They laugh and are happy in the warm October night, as if death has no meaning for them yet.
Cool.
Death is Not the End, performance by Andreas Constantinou
Performance review
★★★★★★Review 'It is not Mårup Church', Palle Granhøj at Teatret Svalegangen
I See the Poetry of the Body on the Edge of the World
25. september 2025.Kulturnyt, Lita Domino
Review of 'It Is Not Mårup Church': His voice is calm. He shapes small images with his words from his memories. In Granhøj Dans's new performance 'It Is Not Mårup Church,' Palle Granhøj himself takes the stage. Here, he unfolds stories from his personal archive of the heights and depths of longing and the passage of time. Through sound and dance pearls, the audience experiences skilled performers, fine musicians, an exceptional Baltic singer, and not least a four-man choir that all weave the stories together. They tell of how the body remembers and recognizes through what we long for. The performance is a beautiful performance poem worthy of 6 stars.
On stage, we meet a young man. In his dance, I sense the feeling of a love encounter - not something he is experiencing in this moment, but a memory that fills him with joy and longing. He wears a loose, white shirt - dancing. His hands move like butterflies, and his feet, as if on a journey, turn into a run, then into a festive dance. He has a longing expression on his face, and his movements become more and more intense in his bodily storytelling. I get an intuitive sense of longing for love - perhaps the first love he experienced as a young man?
With another young man, I intuitively sense that he longs to experience his own strength. With each small sequence of the dance, he is challenged with more and more elastic bands from another performer on stage. Elastic bands that are tied around his body, restricting his movements. The more effort he puts into stretching his movements away from his body, the more intense his expression becomes. In the end, the struggle for mobility is so fierce that he roars in helplessness, and I sense that his longing shifts from struggle to a desire for free movement. This has a decisive impact on the drama of the performance.
Shortly after, a woman is carried onto the stage, wrapped in elastic bands. She cannot move. The performer who roared earlier but is now freed helps unwind the elastic bands from the woman, and here her dance becomes a homage to life, I think. Like a bird song. Perhaps like the lark Palle Granhøj poetically describes in one of his small memory images. Perhaps like a longing for more than the body can comprehend? The performance changes and, in its final depiction of longing, turns into a requiem.
'It Is Not Mårup Church' is filled with tenderness and poetry. I enjoyed Granhøj's storytelling, the dancers' play with elastic bands as limitations for action, the sensitivity in the soundscape - especially the Baltic tones from the singers - and I savored the transformative nature of the narrative about human fragility and strength.
Thank you to the team behind the performance 'It Is Not Mårup Church' and to Teatret Svalegangen for welcoming us in.
It Is Not Mårup Church
Teater review
Photo: Yolanda Montiel★★★★★Review of 'Taranto Aleatorio', Bora Bora in Aarhus
Two Insistent Drama-Queens in a Dazzling Flamenco
9. september 2025.Kulturnyt, Lita Domino
They have nerve. Two women meet in a park where the ground is kicked up in an intense flamenco dance. The two women in a convincing performance filled with humor and charm. The show 'Taranto Aleatorio' is a 5-star experience.
We meet the two Spanish women in the park. - Perhaps Andalusia, which is the place where Flamenco has been cultivated for many years among the Spanish Roma. The stage is simple. The two women follow life from their bench. We sense from their body language that they are listening to music, without the audience yet being able to hear anything. I sense attitude in their faces. Drama in their hands. They begin to hum along. Rock in rhythms.
In the show Taranto Aleatorio, there are two strong characters. One woman has a classic voice like a Spanish Roma, which creates a fantastic soundscape that follows the performance analogously throughout. She plays with the sounds. Opens and closes the space. The tone language is oriental, -à-la Arabic, and I hear individual Spanish word sounds, but without me really being able to grasp the language. The rhythms weave into the other performer's expression.
The other woman, the one in the red shoes, begins to dance flamenco. The rhythms are created by the heels of the shoes, by the rustling of the fabric, by her breathing and small sounds from the mouth. The hands that clap and the fingers that snap. Like birds that dominate, - like cats that claim territories. Like a storyteller who insists on leading and seducing her audience to a certain place. That is the heart of the show, I think.
It is as if the two performers are having a conversation with each other in the park. They exchange stories and emotions. One with her Roma song and rhythms with the body, the other with her flamenco dance and music sounds. I get the feeling of an intimate encounter between the two. An encounter filled with acknowledgments and warmth, but also attitude and edge.
In traditional flamenco dance, stories are told. Each dance has its emotions that they express. Tonight, the young performers from the show Taranto Aleatorio honored the old tradition, but also added new angles and new times. I sense Zumba training, running technique, rock concert, and street dance infused into the traditional flamenco, and it makes the show both humorous and beautiful.
What a delightful experience, I say thank you to the team behind 'Taranto Aleatorio' and to Bora Bora who invited us to the flamenco dance.
Taranto Aleatorio
Dans review
Photo: Jason Alami★★★★Review of 'Collective Behaviour', at Bora Bora in Aarhus
The Symmetry of Light Mirrors the Dancers’ Intimate Spaces
3. september 2025.Kulturnyt, Lita Domino
Review of 'Collective Behaviour': Have you ever pondered what light truly is? A cone of light on the stage. A hand, fingers, an arm illuminated. Moving through the dark void. The contrast between light and shadow sets the motion within the cone, expanding into multiple beams. Tonight, I’m in the company of a light-weaver. I peer through windows into the collective life of a community. A playful dance of reflection in a landscape of light and shadow. The visual work 'Collective Behaviour' at Bora Bora is a sculptural dance installation worthy of 4 stars.
The light arrives on stage in small cones - carried by three dancers. It creates a stark contrast to the darkness surrounding them. The cones of light expand into intimate spaces, and the audience encounters two states: one within the space and one outside it, embodied by the dancers on stage.
The light moves in flashes, and I experience it as glimpses through small windows - into a sculptural image of the community’s structure.
Flash 1: A dancer in her own domain - dancing within a mirror installation. Her movements cast reflections backward in multiple formations through the mirrors physically set up on stage. The audience witnesses her movements from various angles through the mirrors in the space.
Blackout and Flash 2: A new window on the stage reveals a woman outside the space, responding to the previous dancer’s movements, now shrouded in darkness. Another blackout, another flash of light, and the woman is now inside the community’s arena - a stage where she, too, casts images of herself into the mirrors.
In this way, 'Collective Behaviour' weaves a dialogue between light and darkness, seen as windows into the arena of community.
The mirror reflections of the dancers are technically impeccable. The light shapes with precision - the dancers constantly shifting to new places on stage, moving in and out of intimate spaces.
The installation evolves throughout the performance, and I almost get a militant sense of the three performers’ dance as the piece progresses, as more and more mirrors echo their bodies. It feels as though the bodies form a symmetrical chorus, and the dancers become icons of the community they depict.
For this exquisite dance experience, I extend my thanks to the team behind 'Collective Behaviour' and to Bora Bora for inviting us inside.
Collective Behaviour
Dans review
Photo: Michael Ortheim★★★★★Review of 'Ants 1+1=3', at Bora Bora in Aarhus
The Dance is an Anthill in Motion
8. april 2025.Kulturnyt, Lita Domino
Review of 'Ants 1+1=3': Perhaps you’ve experienced going to your laundry room to wash clothes, only to discover that a corner of the basement has been invaded by an anthill. In the performance 'Ants 1+1=3,' the quirky behavior of these creatures has been transformed into a dance piece. Choreographed into a harmonious and beautiful work, it’s a 5-star creation.
The performance begins at the heart of the anthill. The performers form a tightly interwoven figure - a dance installation resembling a pane-like, sacred slab in the center of the stage. In the next moment, they morph into a pulsating heart, where tiny beings trickle out, breaking the circle into a larger orbit.
The performers traverse the stage like ants with fervor - moving with such meticulousness and inventive richness. Their caricatures of the tiny critters in this physical theater make me laugh. I chuckle at the simplicity of a single ant, spinning itself into a frenzy on the dance floor, losing all composure, and my heart softens when the little creatures mirror that struggling being back into the group.
The dancers’ physical expressions unfold through contemporary dance, street dance, and acrobatic feats. The five performers are skilled dancers, with a keen sense of both the body’s subtle details and the collective unity in the choreography. They move over one another in ways that let the audience recognize the ants’ movements. Their tiny legs, their antennae, and their behavior are reflected in the dancers’ bodily motions and poses. Every joint in the dancers’ bodies shifts whimsically and recognizably, like ants searching for food or community.
I love the biological inspiration woven into the dancers’ refined expressions. The performance sends both kisses and chills toward societal structures and the herd mentality we also encounter in the human world. These recognizable ants get a twist through street dance, offering me, as an audience member, a fresh perspective on them - and, by extension, on life and the community I know from here.
For this subtle and intriguing experience in the company of 'Ants 1+1=3,' I say thank you to the team behind it and to Bora Bora for inviting us in.
Ants 1+1=3
Dans review
Photo: Pietro Bertora★★★★★Review: 'Batty Bwoy', at Bora Bora in Aarhus
The massive force of sexuality
1. april 2025.Kulturnyt, Ambiorn Happy
Review of 'Batty Bwoy' at Bora Bora: I do like the clinging juice from Harald Beharie's gender, when he reached for my hand and I gently embraced his open palm and long fingers, to reach the connection to the performer from Norway with the juice of my own. You know, 'Batty Bwoy' is a word from Patois, a Jamaican expression that does not sincerely embrace the gay sexuality. In fact not. But in the dance performance of
So, this dance performance 'Batty Bwoy' is a story of sexual transformation. You will enjoy it, no matter what sexuality you're into. Or you might tremble with fear, as the performer dissolves the fourth wall, drawing the audience - seated raw and close on the floor - into the juice of life, where his private member bathes in the generous nectar of love, water, and lubricants.
The character on stage do not enjoy being 'Batty Bwoy'. He had to swallow all too much lubricant, seed and water. He had to show his anus to everyone, trying to find someone to make love to. He struggled with the long hair - the role as 'Batty Bwoy'. Tries to find an escape from cultural defined roles, and reaching for an embracement with himself, and his sexuality. Hang on. He finds the way out.
Ever since I lived as a prostitute, I've enjoyed the question of sexuality: 'Why do I do, what I do, and do I like doing, what I do? Well, you get the drift. English is not my language. The body is.
So when Harald Beharie transforms from self hate, into the next step - which is reaching out - I am game. He wants to grab the hand of someone. I share him mine, all wet and juicy. And then he dances like a crazy and is engulfed in the provocative kind of sexual expression. And after that, he finds his real sexuality. And after that, what happens then? When you have transformed into to your true sexuality?
I ain't telling you. Go to the performance and see for yourself. This massive force of sexuality. Oh no. Like a tsunami, or even stronger. You know.
Thank you very much, Harald Beharie, and thanks to Bora Bora for opening the space for 'Batty Bwoy'.
Batty Bwoy
Dans review
Photo: Christoffer Brekne★★★★★★6-star rating: Review of 'Shroud', at Bora Bora in Aarhus
Dying Is Never Easy, Shrouded in the Curtains of the Mind
22. marts 2025.Kulturnyt, Ambiorn Happy
Time to say goodbye. Andreas Constantinou is in a coffin, with his parents' funerals adjacent on video screens. The father on his right, the mother on his left, his own coffin in the middle. The next one to enter the universe of death. 'Shroud' is a public performance of the privacy of grief and death, a masterful work of art, deserving a six-star rating. Thank you.
Now, there is nothing more to say about the performance 'Shroud'. Great art does that to us, leaves us silent with moist eyes. Completely engulfed in our own inner worlds of life and death. Everybody in the audience cries from the beauty of the scene, crafted by
That’s never easy. To die, knowingly. To let go of the handgrip of life, while your son holds your hands.
Entangled in grief and his nascent sense of death - both the incoming and the one alive - the performance 'Shroud' takes the audience to the land of the not-living. I’ve never seen anything like this, with the soundscape created by
The enormous shroud seems to be a living organ with multiple faces and personalities inside. I think Andreas Constantinou is only one, but at times there seem to be three or more not-living persons in the shroud. The material of the shroud makes patterns of light and shade, so that I see dozens of faces in it.
Like grief. Faces projected onto the inner curtains of the mind. Terrible scenes of longing, transformation, sadness. The loss of body, but the reminder of expression and personality.
Still, I will stay silent - holding my stance in the waves of the audience’s hands showing their gratitude and admiration with the sound of living people clapping. Curtain fall has arrived. In the dark, we walk through the city, talking about death and life. I thank you for a profound experience at Bora Bora in Aarhus. It’s good to be alive.
Shroud
Dans review
★★★★★Review 'In the Middle of Life', Teatret Svalegangen
Are you having sex with your husband, or are you just arguing?
16. november 2024.Kulturnyt, Ambiorn Happy
Review of 'Midt i livet': Are you tired of arguing with your husband? Then go to Teatret Svalegangen and see 'In the Middle of Life'. A well-functioning argument worth 5 stars. Super well played by
I myself don't argue with my woman. Only about small things, I think. Where the bed should be, and that kind of thing. Small things.
But Charlotte - and this is not to point fingers - she is on the loose side as a woman. She is boiling. She has met Mads. 3 months ago. A police officer in Aarhus, who is married, but who no longer loves his wife.
If only Anders had said what every man thinks:
And... I don't know. It's rare that arguments make any sense. Most of the time we argue because we've momentarily lost touch with each other, and our foothold in reality.
'Midt i livet' is super realistic. The lines are straightforward. The dilemmas are familiar for every counselor - and therefore also familiar to anyone who has experienced a bad relationship.
You get humor too. Black humor.
Charlotte is a mix of a tough wife and a manipulative bandit. Her husband is a mix of a warm hearted man and a tiring sissy.
They've both lost their desire. The joy of working. Happiness in family life. Connection. Lust. They have become empty shells who feel sorry for themselves.
They can't talk to each other at all. Just complain, grumble, and grieve.
There are 2 stars for the actors. 2 stars for the dialogue. 1 star for being relevant to you if you're tired of arguing with your husband.
Midt i lieft by David Eldridge
Teater review
★★★★★Review of 'From England with love', at Bora Bora in Aarhus
They depict the complex heart of England
1. oktober 2024.Kulturnyt, Lita Domino
The choreography is tight in the performance 'From England with Love'. 8 dancers with an energetic energy. Dancing with the icons of British culture. A tribute with both a heart for community and at the same time rebellion against following the uniform underground. The performance is a 5-star experience and has its stronghold in the abstract landscape of modern dance.
The performance 'From England with Love' is a story about a complex society's ways of identifying itself.
The performance 'From England with Love' draws a loop from the classical surface and dives into the underground where the beat is heavier. I get the feeling of miners, warriors and football hooligans hanging out in groups. Clubs and battlefields in a common beat. Fast-paced staccato, - abrupt sound, - old choral works in a new electronic gallop. - And the dance follows the beat of the sound. They create images of dissolution, of violence, of power and impotence. - exchange their dance expressions from the high-pitched altar where the church and the tradition-bound education system unfold, with a rebellion of the homogeneous underground.
England as a community, with the demands of new times and sources of inspiration. A population's ambivalence towards their own society is portrayed with a keen sense of complexity. The complexity between individual and community, and loss of identity when the balance is not there. This sense of complexity makes the work strong.
The performance is a great experience. Thanks to the team behind the performance 'From England with Love' and to Bora Bora for inviting them to the city of Aarhus.
From England with love by Hofesh Shechter
Dans review
★★★★★Review of 'Karrasekare', at Bora Bora in Aarhus
Suffering is part of life – and that's how we invented a round dance
5. september 2024.Kulturnyt, Lita Domino
The performance 'Karrasekare' on Bora Bora is an impressive poetry about the transience of humanity and all the rituals we create to feel in control during the time we are here. The performance is like a centrifugal force. The tribal dance, the united beat, - all unfolded in the ritual power of the round dance. 5 stars.
The room the audience sits in is like a temple. A beautiful beginning where a deity awakens the world through his song. In the performance, a dark cloth is pulled from the floor of the room, like the sensation of an ocean receding and the world coming into view. A touching salute to the beginning of life.
There is chaos in life and it is interesting what we as humans put up in its focal points. In the play 'Karrasekare' humanity emerges from the shadows after creation. They are characterized by pain and loneliness. Crying, they look for each other in the dusk. Meet each other on common ground. Creates the first round dance. A round dance that expands. Rituals and the dark primordial power of carnival are awakened. The rituals of the performers are created out of their own absurdity from suffering, - at times comical and at other times terrifying. They depict man's attempt to master chaos, - searching into the centrifugal trance. Dissolving into animal images and finally they try to control their fear of chaos through a sanctification of the suffering... Dramatic and sensory saturating.
'Karrasekare' is a visually stunning performance. Elements of tribal dance and physical display of absurd rituals make it entertaining and at times grotesque. It has a special sense of primordial ritual dance, that I like. The tribute to the cradle of dance, - the round dance and its feeling of cohesion through a common beat gave the performance its special character.
Many thanks to the team behind 'Karrasekare', and to Bora Bora for inviting them to visit here in Aarhus.
Karrasekare Moreno Solinas, Igor Urzelai Hernando
Dans review
Photo: Laura Ratschau★★★★★Review of 'The Girl With the Hurricane Brain', Teatret Svalegangen
Are you ready to die? With a drink in front of you?
14. august 2024.Kulturnyt, Ambiorn Happy
Review: 'The Girl With the Hurricane Brain'. It's a 5 stars rating to the opera 'The Girl With the Hurricane Brain' at Teatret Svalegangen. Thanks for the costumes, music, singers, direction and story. I am impressed by the professional level of the performance by all 14 participants (including the conductor). It was even touching. It's painful to have a hurricane brain, we get that.
Don't read my review because I don't know nothing about opera. Can barely understand the words in an English pop song (the opera is in English). But on the other hand, I have seen John Wayne on German TV in the 5th grade, 2 years before we got a German teacher, so I understand everything without being able to understand the language. Thank you, ZDF.
The story - starring the soprano Peyee Chen, and I don't understand the words she sings - is about pain, fear, anxiety in the last 1 hour and 20 minutes of our voyage on the Titanic. Okay, I recognize "climate", "horse", and "changes". But it's not much out of a libretto of 34 pages.
Peyee Chen is in the role of the little girl who personally feels the iceberg approaching. She is unhappy. She howls and torments her parents. They don't understand her. Do their work. Grinds coffee from morning to night. And the kid howls and cries and shouts.
I feel for those parents - Ted Schmitz and Jessica Aszodi. If I stood on the deck of the Titanic in freezing weather, I didn't go into the howling choir either. As we crash into the side of the iceberg, I'd rather sit at the bar. Asks for a whiskey and smiles charmingly at the nearest woman.
This is how we are different. The end of the world cannot be stopped. The Incas went down. The Egyptians. The Greeks. The Indians. The Romans. Yes, even the Vikings had to give up.
All highly developed cultures end in collapse!
Is our culture highly developed? Yes, I think so. Our fate is sealed. Doom awaits!
The wise can predict the future. On stage, Joseph Bolger is smart. He looks at the patterns, he sees the development. He lets the girl know how bad it looks.
So the girl tries to convince the parents to stop their coffee grinder and do something! Just something! Stop death! Stop climate change! Stop grinding coffee! Don't buy more electric cars. Buy no more at Temu! Just stop!
But she has a hard time convincing the parents. 20% of us buy cheap junk on Temu.com - manufactured with devastating consequences for the environment. We get it shipped home on container ships from Maersk, with devastating consequences for the environment. We play with it and throw it out. Such is our life. Who wants to turn off the internet 9 months out of the year? Who will stop consuming, just to save our common Titanic?
And, it is not actually ordinary people who steer the ship. It's something... It's culture. All cultures bloom, bear fruit, and perish when winter comes.
Or what?
You can look forward to the costumes in 'The Girl With the Hurricane Brain'. The clothes are sewn from parchment - skin skinned from an animal approximately one meter long. Probably pigskin. The clothes are sewn nicely. That's what we're all about. Fashionable clothes on the Titanic.
Those who understand opera say the singers sing skillfully.
There is a 9-person symphony orchestra in the performance. 3 strings, 3 wind instruments, percussion, guitar and grand piano. The music is abstract - not melodic - symbolic.
Many young people go out of balance in this time. Like the girl in the play, they listen to the prophets who preach doomsday. There is much to be afraid of. Personally, it doesn't matter to me. We have to die of something. There is no telling which will come first.
Line 2A in a pedestrian crossing. New corona. Plague. Putin in Ecco shoes drops an atomic bomb in Aarhus Harbour. The Gulf Stream shifts and the climate in Denmark becomes cold like northern Finland, and I hate cross-country skiing. Someone continues to use 4 times our resources and our world is slowly and surely burning down.
It ends with us dying. That's what this opera says, and it's true. But until that happens, I'm happy to meet the little grandmother in Rema on the way home from the theater.
- There are 5 kroner missing, says the man behind the till in a sad voice.
The woman speaks Greenlandic, I can see that in her. Her eyes are strong and alive, her skin has had a lot of sun, on the edge of the inland ice.
- You can get a fiver from me, here!
The woman smiles wholehearted. - Thank you, that was a good deed, she tells me.
- You are welcome, I reply.
We smile at each other, late at night in Rema. Just like that, heart to heart. That's how I want to go down with my ship.
Thank you for the experience. It was good.
'The Girl With the Hurricane Brain'
Performance review
★★★★★Review: 'Flying Superkids, Aarhus'
When play becomes beautiful artistry
9. maj 2024.Kulturnyt, Lita Domino
Review of 'Flying Superkids' in Aarhus: A performance at a 5 stars rating, because there is a high pulse in the Paladsteltet on Lokesvej in Aarhus. 'Flying Superkids' jump over high obstacles in both flip-flops and power jumps. They dance Street, Hiphop, play theater and do fun, jesting, and acrobatics.
The 'Flying Superkids' Show anno 2024 is an energy bomb. A tribute to community, friendship and love, which they also sing at the start of the show. The team spirit is felt enthralling during the entire performance in the audience seats. Scene after scene, both big and small artists have a good eye for each other. Like a common pulse, they make joyful jumps and strengthen each other in endurance and concentration.
We as the audience are entertained and follow along as best we can. With soda and popcorn in our arms - and a heart rate of 120, we see the artists (who are only children after all) jump several meters into the air, roll around in a transverse direction and end in a perfect somersault. I almost drop all my popcorn in astonishment.
The show does not only take place inside the arena. The entire area around the Paladsteltet is crammed with trampolines, small stepping stones for practicing balance, bouncy castles and more. Both before, after and during the break, the children in the audience can use their bodies and develop their play. I notice that the mat in front of the stage is a jumping mat, so that the children who have bought a ticket for these seats can take a jump during the break.
It's fun to be in motion, and I like that 'Flying Superkids' promotes the analog life and play itself.
The stage is set with jumping gymnastics, - singing, dancing and acrobatics - but the entertaining part is also largely the outfits that the show takes on. Small elements of comedy and theater at children's level. - Vikings who go on a mission and end up in a spring hall on Jernaldervej. - Ninjas who dance in great costumes, and in the best circus style, - a presenter who makes fun and weaves the show together with both brooms and high spirits. It is entertaining and good hours in good company.
Thanks to 'Flying Superkids' and the whole team behind the show. It's good.
Flying Superkids
Show review
Photo: Louise Herrche Serrup★★★★Review of 'The Weather Report', Bora Bora in Aarhus
A shout out to all of us who love to save people - up from the bottom of the well
24. april 2024.Kulturnyt, Ambiorn Happy
Review of 'The Weather Report': I love to fly. But only if I'm the pilot. You know it. No one wants to be a passenger in a car driven by a manic satan trying to break all world records on the motorway between Aarhus and Copenhagen. We want to manage our lives. Crazy driving is not our preferred mode of transport. But sometimes we ourselves are him - the crazy, the maniac. Depressive, bipolar, manic, aggressive. 'The Weather Report' is about crazy people in life. Us who can't find the right path. Much of the time we are on the verge of entering the death spiral and crashing to earth.
The show begins with slow movements on the floor. Good music. Next follows a video projection that explains the turbulence we experience when we fly (or just go down to the grocery store and live our life). Then follows an insight into psychiatry. Electric shock and chemical straitjackets. Finally the death spiral. The plane - or the person - spiraling towards the ground because we can't follow the right path. We repeat our mistake. All the way down because we don't know any better.
That's the way it is. With everything from corruption, drunk driving, low self-esteem, bad morals, burglary and so on. We don't stop on our own, until the police grab us and drive us straight to prison, or to a mental institution.
Well. 'The Weather Report' is a well created performance with video, sound and music, stroboscopes and 3 performers. A 4 stars rating. It's good work.
But the audience in the theater at Bora Bora is divided into two camps, and that is a problem. I think. One camp cheers and screams for at least 7-8-9 stars. The other camp looks at the clock, 10 times an hour and seems confused. 2 stars? I doubt the other camp can get all the way up there. Maybe a single duty star?
This piece is made as a call. Like a scream in the dark that demands that the audience humble themselves, sit still, listen and accept the pain. It is problematic. I think. There is more to life than pain.
There is no better news than people falling into a well. Children, old wives and young girls. We love people who fall into the well.
- And who are rescued back up again!
I can hear the pain, the screams from the bottom of the death pit. The loneliness. The depression. The madness. The abuse of psychiatry. People's indifference. 'The Weather Report' depicts the pain of being crazy. My own mind is also quite crazy, but I always have a red Superman cape in my coat pocket. I think we should save each other when we hear the cry from the bottom of the well. On that point, 'The Weather Report' is a disappointment.
There is no rescue possible in 'The Weather Report'. The characters are gripped by despair, hopelessness, powerlessness. I understand them.
But I think next time - Jon R. Skulberg - you will do 'The Weather Report - 2'. Just for my sake, and for those in the room at Bora Bora who need solutions, ways out, hope and optimism. And if you need a red Superman cape, call me. I bought a pallet of them in China. They cost nothing. Being brave is the only thing in life that is free. It is the anxiety and doubt that costs us dearly. Braveness is always free.
Thank you for the show. It was good.
The Weather Report
Performance review
Photo: Rumle Skafte★★★★★Review of 'Desolate', Aarhus Teater
'Desolate' is a superb piece of theatre, stolen from dead men
12. april 2024.Kulturnyt, Ambiorn Happy
Review of 'Desolate' ('Øde lagt' - 'Wüst'): You'll have 7 young and beautiful actors, an excellent German writer, Enis Maci. What can go wrong in 'Desolate' at Aarhus Teater? Nothing: 5 stars rating. The graduation performance from
Perhaps it is the translation by
- The restoration of my honor requires my total destruction.
- She speaks the language of power. Not her own language.
- Talk to us, instead of passing out all the time.
You can look forward to the text in 'Desolate'. I think. Furthermore, I am a great admirer of the direction, the stage, the costumes, lighting and sound. But you can see that for yourself.
It is so eloquent, this year's graduation performance - the stage, the sound, the lighting, the direction, the actors - that you could consider buying an author as well. A person who can write her own stories. But instead, someone chose a box of chocolates from the Otto Duborg district.
Enis Maci.
The German woman has nicked half of the play from Heinrich von Kleist. It's easy enough. The man has been dead in the coffin for 200 years. He shot himself because of low self-esteem and no money. In order to gain courage, he first shot his new girlfriend (who also wanted to die), and then he could 'desolate' himself. It was popular back then, when you were poor and an artist.
It was thought that the great destruction - death - would restore man's honor. It must be something German. I don't understand.
The second half of the play, Enis Maci has ripped from Russ Meyer. He is also dead, but in the 60s he was a celebrated film director. In his films, all the female actors had large breasts. The Vixen, they were called. The film was always set in a desert. There was something about big cars and murders.
Russ Meyer's stories never made any sense, but we didn't care back then. Too busy with those breasts, and you yourself are 15 years old. And 35. And 45. And so on, and the glasses keep sliding down the nose.
It's good theatre, 'Desolate'. In the old days. A young woman is rescued by an officer from a brutal gang rape. He chases the fleeing gang. Kisses the young girl who has passed out. Kisses some more. Pulls up her skirt. And now it's happening. Perhaps the most famous rape scene in literature, written by Heinrich von Kleist. Here you get the scene in an English version: "Then— the officer." And in the German version: "Hier – traf er."
The line of thought - can you see it - it is the sign of a rape? Most German intellectuals think so. I don't know. It was easier to understand the imagery in Russ Meyer's stories, I think.
After she has been raped, the story is exciting. I couldn't sit still. The young girl - 200 years ago - lives in a culture where you don't get pregnant before marriage. So she gets a little harsh treatment, I'm sorry for that, because she doesn't even know she's been inseminated. She was passed out while it happened. Now she is judged unfairly because she has become pregnant.
The story continues with an elegant jump, from Heinrich von Kleist's play 'Die Marquise von O's birth in 1808, across Denmark's bankruptcy, industrialization, the birth of communism, the world wars, the Beatles - right up to "Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! ". The film by Russ Meyer from 1965. A film that takes place in a desert. All the women have big breasts, and so on. The film has been reviewed as "the world's worst film". That is, the lowest. Worst. But that is probably because the film reviewers then sat in the cinema hall and could not enjoy themselves with the essentials of the movie.
In the new era, with the violent Vixen women, it is the men who go on the defensive. The women have the power. A nice contrast to the old days.
Our female protagonist - now super pregnant - is fighting for her life. Restoring her honor, and clinging to her unborn child. Fighting is a better restoration of honor, I think. Kleist may disagree, in his cold and wet grave.
Over time, the victims change faces. But the bad people are the same. Namely, those who were harmed. And then they take revenge and kill people without really having any reason. No reason other than evil.
See it for yourself. Or no, together with other audience members at
Desolate by Enis Maci (Heinrich von Kleist, Russ Meyer)
Teater review
★★★★Review 'Double program', at Bora Bora in Aarhus
When character worship becomes a fight - Double dance program at Bora Bora
8. april 2024.Kulturnyt, Lita Domino
Review of 'Café Müller' and 'Toujours de ¾ Face!': They are both in the shadow of an icon. Fighting against an old image of an idol or is it their own character worship they are fighting? Tonight, there is a double dance performance on stage at Bora Bora. Two separate performances, but set in context with each other through the evening's battle theme at the theatre.
'Cafe Müller' and 'Toujours de 3/4 Face' are two performances with very different expressions, but they both have a connection in their character worship of the ideal.
It's pitch black. Tiny tripping sounds of footsteps running across a bare room meet the audience in the dark. The performer opens and closes backstage doors. In the light silhouettes of the doors, his body is drawn up like a fickle bird that doesn't know where to look, - is he looking for a way in or is it out of his own web?
The character of the performance draws threads from icon worship and weaves them into its own search for a sense of identity. At one point, the performer puts his great idol on stage. He concretely carries a huge icon into the stage space as a cardboard statue - the great dancer Pina Bausch.
The performance has its strength in its humorous approach to icon worship. The great Madonna is imitated and acted out in a German incoherent game. A dance piece with a simple choreography with a humorous twist.
She is strong and the choreography is tight. Like a karate fighter, she defends her space on the floor.
The performer in 'Toujours de 3/4 Face' has made a distinctive performance of the fighting icon. She uses a special beat in her performance. As a manifestation of the expression of the fight, she moves her body in sync with a French-speaking male voice. The voice speaks of martial arts, and of tactical reflections in a battle arena. He talks about beating his opponent and peppers his words with exclamations and sound words. It has a beat that moves the dancer.
The performance has its strength in its tight choreography. The concept of dancing to a martial icon's praise of violence gives the piece a brutality that stings its audience. A keen sense of the icon's being, I think.
Both performances are interesting proposals for new stage art from Europe's 'battle arenas', so thank you to the teams behind the two performances 'Cafe Müller' and 'Toujours de 3/4 Face', and to Bora Bora for inviting them to Aarhus.
Café Müller
Toujours de ¾ Face!
Dans review
★★★★★Review of 'Liberty', Brilliant physical theatre
Liberty is a brilliant piece of physical theatre
6. februar 2024.Kulturnyt, Ambiorn Happy
Review of 'Liberty': Attitude. Kristján Ingimarsson has developed that ability to perfection. And because he is a lovely artist, I like it. He welcomes the crowd to Bora Bora like he's a rock star - high on MDMA, Viagra and the scent of himself. He gets us up and running on that attitude. The smell of success. The picture of a winner.
'Liberty' is physical theater with humour, lots of wild stunts. Beautifully choreographed and with added perfect sound effects by Andro Manzoni. The performers are resilient, elastic, humorous and precise. Some of them are younger than others:
'Liberty' is about the secret question that everyone has, at work, in the family, in private: 'What if I just stopped following all the silly rules!'
Yes, then we were probably all a rock star or one of the performers in 'Liberty'. Let go of the rules and take your freedom, that's the inner core of the show. One sparkling star for that.
In a series of scenes 'Liberty' explores the human being. We follow the rules. Not our own rules, but the rules set by the boss, society, religion, mating desire, tradition, good behavior.
There are some who make the rules. The rest of us are just weak, "filled with hot air" and cheap for sale. We are dandelions in a field that can't quite figure out how to put the bull in his place and ask him to stop eating us.
That's why Kristján Ingimarsson is making a revolution on stage. The dandelions - us fools, yes it's hard to say out loud - rise to battle. But can we win, or are we going crazy as humans, if we drop all the rules?
I think so. But crazy people can also be brilliant, so maybe it's worth taking the chance? 'Liberty' takes a chance and it's fun and entertaining.
The festive and fantastically entertaining performance uses the old trick of making the audience laugh when we are criticized. It works wonderfully. Kristján Ingimarsson says he is not an artist, but maybe funny once in a while. I disagree. He is both an artist of international class and funny. If you can stand being teased.
The audience at Bora Bora is excited. They love the show.
Personally, I admire that Kristján Ingimarsson on stage roughly only adheres to 2 rules.
Thanks to the team behind 'Liberty'. It was a very good experience. I think.
Liberty, Kristján Ingimarsson Company
Teater review
★★★★★Review of 'Enoch's Circus Show', in Aarhus
Circus with clowns and spirit
8. december 2023.Kulturnyt, Ambiorn Happy
Review of Enoch's Circus Show: The circus tent is hot. On both sides of the elongated riding arena it is packed with families and happy children. Circus artist Jimmy Enoch welcomes you to a one-hour Christmas circus in the middle of Aarhus. There is fast DJ music. There is spirit. Skilled artists. You and your children get a show of the highest class. It's a 5-star performance. As many stars as Cirkus Arena usually gets. But I think these stars have a slightly stronger glow. I can see them shining in the eyes of the teenagers and children. I can see them thinking: "wow, I'd like to be a circus artist."
I am quite happy to sit in the tent, where you are very close to the artists - as well as the happy vaulting gymnasts from Flying Superkids. The closeness you and your family have to the artists creates a good atmosphere. In a traditional circus, there is actually a long way down from the 7th row and up to the dome of the tent. Here you are so close that everyone in the tent can see everything. The seats are all sold as "loge" seats. Everyone can see.
The performance lasts one hour. It is better, I think, than the long performances with breaks in a traditional circus. That hour goes by quickly because there is so much spirit in the performance.
There is a lot to experience in Enoch's Circus Show, but I am particularly happy with the woman who does handstands, Sophie Alton. With her legs she shoots with a bow and arrow. Her body is made of marzipan, super flexible in all directions. A world-class artist.
The juggler, José Rameros is skilled. I can juggle 3 balls, but he continues all the way up to both 7-8-9 objects (or more, it's hard to count) which are juggled up to a height of 5-6 meters. He is a showman. Together with his partner, he also performs a roller skating number where they throw each other round and round on a small stage.
There are no wild animals, but the man with the dogs - Edi Laforte puts on a show where the fast dogs jump high and roll, fly through rings. It's simple fun and very well-functioning.
Fun and acrobatics. A tent (heated) on the square between the Cathedral and Aarhus Theatre. Good mood and inspiration for how children and adults can use their bodies far above computer games and swiping fingers on mobile phones.
It is a real circus, in a modern version. Thanks for the show. Read more at Du kan læse mere på Cirkusshow.dk
Show review
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