HYPOGEA
premiered in November 2025
at Dansehallerne, Copenhagen
What if grief is not something to move beyond, but something to move with?
HYPOGEA brings together dance, live voice, visual art, and sound in a contemporary ritual where mourning unfolds as a shared, embodied, and transformative experience. Within shifting material and emotional landscapes, performers traverse states of petrification, lament, tenderness, anger, and release.
At the centre of the work is clay: primordial matter that carries traces of both life and decay. Bodies and material become intertwined as the performers move through landscapes of accumulation, rupture, resistance, and dissolution. A large relief sculpture of entangled bodies forms a subterranean world around them, while fragments of lament emerge through voice, movement, and sound.
Rather than seeking to resolve grief, HYPOGEA creates a space to remain with its contradictions and intensity. Where sorrow can be felt, shared, and transformed.
“In HYPOGEA, Nadja Mattioli and Nanna Hanfgarn Jensen—through their pared-down expression—touch a wide emotional register, and strike a nerve that does not easily fade. But that is precisely the point: we all need a space to scream—a space where we can share our grief and longing with others.”
Casper Koeller, Sceneblog
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Credits
- Concept
- Beyond Darkness
- Choreography
- Nadja Mattioli in collaboration with Nanna Hanfgarn Jensen & the dancers
- Dancers
- Antoinette Helbing, Britu Tränkler, Polena Kolia Petersen
- Vocal performer
- Claire Zervas
- Sound
- Eliza Bozek
- Sculpture
- Nanna Starck
- Lights
- Felipe Osorio-Guzmán
- Costumes
- Lærke Bang Barfod
- Dramaturgical dialogue partner
- Jonas Schnor
- Photography
- Jacob Kirkegaard
- Trailer
- Mathias Broe
- Producer
- Nanna Hanfgarn Jensen in collaboration with Dansehallerne
