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.
Organisation
Sort/Hvid is a “small metropolitan theatre” and thus part of a scheme where the state and the municipality together make a total annual contribution to the daily operation of a number of Copenhagen theatres.
In addition, Sort/Hvid gains revenue from ticket sales for performances and other artistic projects. From private and public foundations, the theater receives project support for specific artistic projects.
Management
Nathalie Mellbye
Artistic Director
Karoline Michelsen
Managing Director
Board
Nadia Kløvedal Reich
Chairman of the Board
Director of Development / SPEKTA, Former Manager of Fiction / DR.
Christine Ulrich Andersen
Vice Chairman of the Board
Partner / Neugebauer Clan Law Office
Helene Gjerris
Member of the Board
President of the Royal Danish Academy of Music
Lise Bach Hansen
Member of the Board
Head of programming Talks & Literature / Royal Danish Library
Christian Have
Member of the Board
Owner / Have Kommunikation & PR