Photo Malthe Ivarsson
About the performance
HYPOGEA is a cross‑aesthetic performance exploring grief, death, and mourning through the intersection of dance, sculpture, and music. It reimagines grief as a vital human experience and a ritual that gathers us in raw, messy, and uncontainable emotion. A wrestling with our inner underworlds, allowing sorrow to take shape without restraint, without ending.
At the centre of the work is clay, primordial matter that holds both the origins of life and its inevitable decay. Within this ever‑changing landscape, mourning becomes physical, fragile, collective, imprinted in matter and memory. Scenes shift between sustained states of persistence and sudden eruptions of fury. Fragments of lamentations and ritual songs surface, dissolve, and return. A large relief sculpture of entangled bodies holds the space like a subterranean chamber of grieving creatures, liquid clay seeping from its cavities like sorrow leaking from the earth itself.
HYPOGEA invites us to remain with the intensity and uncertainty of mourning. For those who have passed, for ecologies collapsing, for uncertain futures.
Grief, in its many facets, becomes a force that gathers us, forming new collective rituals where vulnerability is shared, where mourning becomes a source of connection, laying the groundwork for necessary transformation.
The term “hypogea” refers to subterranean structures such as burial chambers or catacombs. In this performance, it symbolises a metaphorical journey into the depths of the human emotions which are often hidden away.
Photo Mathias Broe
Credits
Artistic Concept Beyond Darkness
(Nadja Mattioli & Nanna H. Jensen)
Lead choreographer Nadja Mattioli
Co-choreographer Nanna Hanfgarn Jensen
Dancers
Antoinette Helbing, Britu Tränkler, Polena Kolia Petersen
Vocal Performer Claire Zervas
Sculpture Nanna Starck
Sound Eliza Bozek
Light design Felipe Osorio Guzman
Costume design
Creative producer
Lærke Bang Barfod
Nanna Hanfgarn Jensen
PR Nadja Mattioli
Dramaturgical
dialogue partner Jonas Schnor
Trailer and stills
Mathias Broe
Special thanks to Jacob Kirkegaard, Mikkel Krause Frantzen, Nefeli Beri, Dansehallerne
Photo Mathias Broe
About the artist
Beyond Darkness
Beyond Darkness is a Denmark based company created by choreographers Nadja Mattioli and Nanna Hanfgarn Jensen. Together, we craft sensorial worlds through immersive performances and ecocentric installations: spaces where movement, sound, and imagination invite new encounters between the human and the more than human
Born from our fascination with darkness, we explore what emerges when we create from the unseen, the unspoken, the unknown. Forests, fungi, soil, and overlooked ecologies often become our collaborators; as do our emotional and subconscious landscapes.
We create through cross‑aesthetic collaborations, bringing together choreographers, sound artists, visual artists, scientists, and researchers in open and curious exchange. Posthuman, queer feminist, and ecological thinking also inform our processes and the sensorial worlds we explore.
Through our performances and installations, we aim to spark wonder, shift perspectives, and offer glimpses of futures where humans, other species, and materials live in symbiotic relations
Photo Mathias Broe
Practical info
Dates and times
19.11.2025, 20:00
21.11.2025, 20:00
22.11.2025, 17:00
23.11.2025, 17:00
Duration and stage
1 hour in Blackboxen
Accessibility
The venue is wheelchair accessible, with an elevator providing access to the stages. All restrooms are gender neutral, and an accessible toilet for wheelchair users is available.
Dansehallerne’s address
Franciska Clausens Plads 27, 1799
Copenhagen V.
Post-performance talk
Saturday Nov 22 at 17:00 we will invite the audience for a post performance talk ‘Living with Endings – A dialogue on Grief, Death and Performance’ with Beyond Darkness and performance scholar Jonas Schnor
About Dansehallerne
Dansehallerne is a national center for dance and choreography. Our focus lies in presenting and co‑producing Danish and international productions for all ages. We are a gathering point for passionate dance audiences and professionals. From our center, we communicate pro fessional knowledge of the art of dance, and we drive discussions about all aspects of the art of dance, at an intermediate level and in‑depth.
Being a national center, as well as a gathering point for the local and international communities, we continuously work to ensure the best possible settings for artistic production and for the audience’s encoun ter with the art of dance. Every year, people from all around the country can experience the best that dance has to offer. And for several hun‑ dred artists, Dansehallerne is the year round base and interface for professional activities within the field of dance.
Photo Mathias Broe
Performance Program
