Manifesto
Join the herd queueing up for the theatre trough. Here we fatten you up, massage your body, put sweet music in your trustful ears.
And then: a bullet to the forehead or a squirt of blood from the throat, conventional, of course, or full halal. We drip off, we hang for curing, we cut up, we zealously wrap. At the expiry date the product is dipped in tar and rolled in feathers, before submerged in boiling oil.
From a grey soup, a living creature rises: a body put together of foreign limbs; hooves of goat, wings of rotten fowl, the horns growing from the forehead of the creature. Flex your six tentacles, stretch your crooked legs, look through your new eight sparkling eyes.
Sort/Hvid [Black/White] is a stage in an old slaughterhouse in the meat packing district of Copenhagen. Here art, music and body transform reality. Come and be a part of the mutation.
Profile
Music Theatre of the Future
Sort/Hvid is a stage for art and music. A bold avant-garde scene for radical clashes between art genres and society. An epicenter for music theatre experiments. In the old slaughterhouse, we have long since stopped slaughtering animals but now slaughter your notions. Notions of what music drama is. Notions of what art may and can do. Notions of what is pleasant, understandable, and safe. Come to Sort/Hvid to avoid a predictable experience. Come to have your ideas about art, body, music, and morality challenged.
At Sort/Hvid, risk is a necessity, generosity a given, and uncompromising attitude a prerequisite. Sort/Hvid creates music theatre that confronts its contemporary time. Under the leadership of set designer and director Nathalie Mellbye, Sort/Hvid develops musical works that uncover the grimy sides of contemporary humans and explore both the existential trash and the senseless beauty we carry within. Here, art is not meant to please but dares to confront us with the unknown, the suppressed, and the taboo.
Sort/Hvid’s program ranges from extravagant total installations in all halls, unexplored hybrid formats, to intimate, sensory performances. Our vision is to shape new expressions, form new genres, and dissolve them again. The audience can expect everything from activistic opera to political pop, from death metal puppet theatre to cacophonous chamber music. We refuse to be limited by conventions but unite a diversity of artists from different disciplines to create the music theatre of the future. We dream of projects that are sensuously captivating and groundbreaking, both performatively and visually. Where music, body, space and concept challenge traditional narratives and frozen formats.
As a hub for music theatre Sort/Hvid will produce ambitious performances and facilitate experiments, residencies, workshops, and knowledge sharing. We aim to create a professional, development orientated meeting place for those who want to take music theatre in new directions, both musically and performatively.
Sort/Hvid’s location and history
In 2021, Sort/Hvid was selected by the Danish Arts Foundation as a stage for music drama and has since had a special focus on the intersection between music and performing arts.
Located in a converted slaughterhouse in the Meatpacking District on Vesterbro in Copenhagen, Sort/Hvid enjoys some uniquely flexible stage spaces. All walls between the theater’s two stages and foyer are adjustable, allowing for the creation of very special spaces for each performance.
Our art is created in collaboration with actors across music and performing arts throughout the country and internationally – artists, musicians, ensembles, performers from the independent field, and theaters, festivals, organizations, and networks in Denmark and abroad.
The theatre was founded in 1972 under the name CaféTeatret in the city center. Playwright and director Christian Lollike took over the theatre management in 2011 and changed the name to Sort/Hvid in 2014. Just six months later, the historic theater in Skindergade burned down. In the spring of 2017, we opened our new performing arts house in Staldgade in the Meatpacking District on Vesterbro with support from the Copenhagen Municipality, private foundations, and nearly 400 private supporters who backed a crowdfunding campaign. This is where Sort/Hvid is located today, with set designer and director Nathalie Mellbye serving as artistic director since 2023.