Double Happiness

Director and choreographer Steen Koerner and composer Yo Akim (Joakim Hjejle) have created the art project “Double Happiness”, which is a modern interpretation of the fairy tale writer Hans Christian Andersen’s paper cuts and their roots in China.

Inspired by Hans Christian Andersen’s mix of styles, the exhibition “Double Happiness” draws the poet’s thinking into the present and links his paper cuts to street art, music and Chinese philosophy.

The paper cuts find entirely new forms of expression by meeting electric boogie, tutting dance, film, photography and lyrics in an exhibition that actively engages the audience. The exhibition is accompanied by music with contributions from a number of Danish singers.

Steen Koerner Studios is an urban art company engaging in dance, music, poetry, graffiti, art film, architecture, city space development – and first and foremost theatre. The studio is driven by a desire to learn and develop through experiments, projects and co-operations, based on the ideas from Gesamtkunst.

Steen Koerner Studios is based on the artistic work of Steen Koerner, who is director, choreographer, concept developer and originally emerging from street dance and an urban environment. He founded the company together with Philip Johnsen, who has been working with Steen Koerner since early days. As of end 2018 the company is owned by Steen Koerner himself under the name Steen Koerner Studios IVS.

Steen Koerner is well-known for his contemporary take on classic stories. He started his career as a self-taught robotic dancer in 1982 and travelled the world already at an age of 14 to take up battle with the best from Berlin, London, Paris and New York. Since than he has been a driving force in the urban-arts community and was in 2004 awarded The Hip Hop Lifetime Achievement Award.

It is however as a director that Steen Koerner is best known. His version of “The Nut Cracker” brought him The Theatre Award, The Danish Arts Council’s three years’ work grant and earned him a place in the Danish Cultural Canon.