Humanity needs hope in times of chaos

With performative devices and a baroque show format, director Anja Behrens brings the myth of The Prophecy of the Völva into the present as a ritual mirror of a world in disintegration.

The narratives that have sustained the Western world for decades are collapsing – so where do we turn to find a language for breakdown and rebuilding? In our own Nordic cosmology, the end is not final, but the very condition for a new beginning.

In the myth, the king of the gods, Odin, awakens the Völva from the dead to hear her prophecy of the world’s creation, destruction, and rebirth. In KATARSIS, Signe Egholm Olsen and Patrick Baurichter appear as hosts, spirit conjurers, and shape-shifting figures in an extended ritual of evocation, aiming to make the Völva speak once more.

The work unfolds as a sensorial purification show in three movements – creation, destruction, and rebirth. Tableaux merge seamlessly, forming an unbroken ritual in which illusion, body art, and a female chorus act as performative forces. The music moves from Nordic tonalities and primal voices to brutal noise and pulsating rhythms. In Christian Albrechtsen’s scenography, the universe appears distorted and poetic, grotesque and sacred. Myth meets the subconscious, instinct, and the fractures of the present.

Human beings need consolation and hope in times of chaos. With this work, we reactivate the myth of The Prophecy of the Völva as a tool for imagining what might emerge after the end.

Foto: Jasko Bobar