OuDance Festival

Imagine stepping into a sauna. Heat and steam envelop you, beads of sweat forming, your heartbeat quickening. Around you, the Finnish shouting choir Huutajat sits, their voices crashing like waves. Battle cries and fractured laments, inspired by the ancient Edda poems, rise and fall in rhythmic shouting. 

Weeping Men is a ritual of unmaking. The audience sits shoulder to shoulder with the choir, witnessing a collective cleansing as the “crying Vikings” strip away power and dominance. Layers of control dissolve as they drown in their own undoing. Steam swirls, birch twigs strike, voices crack, history seeps from their pores. Myths of strength and conquest melt into sweat and salt.

Starting shouting in suits and ending naked and silent in the sea, they shed layers of power and pretense, so that we, too, may leave the sauna lighter, more aware of ourselves, and the histories we carry.

Artistic concept / Director : Tone Haldrup Lorenzen | Co-director: Aris Papadopoulos | Composer/artistic collaborator: Petri Sirviö | Huutajat Performers: Petri Sirviö, Antti Pylväs, Tuomo Heikkinen, Janne Törmänen, Hannu Koivula, Raimo Juola-Hietaniemi, Jani Isokääntä, Matti Honkala, Jermi Tertsunen, Jussi Valtteri Saarenpää, Heikki Raudaskoski, Jaakko Tiainen | Director of Photography, photography, and editing: Lise Johansson | Research: Simon Gregersen | Production: Art&About, Signe Sandvej and Sigrid Aakvik | Co-production: CuntsCollective and Pikene På Broen | Supported by: The Danish Arts Foundation, Nordic Culture Point, EU Mobility – European Union/Goethe Institut, William Demant Fonden | The performance contains heat, high vocals and nudity.