This February the Scandinavian sky will be brighter than usual, when two festivals light up the winter darkness. During Copenhagen Light Festival you can experience more than 30 installations specially designed for the festival, and you can enter “The Door” into a parallel world and meet visitors at the Dreamlight Festival in Helsingborg. Below we give you 5 great reasons to visit our lighting festivals in Greater Copenhagen.
1st reason: Winter in Tivoli
Tivoli is one of the main attractions in the premier year of the Copenhagen Light Festival. Among many spectacular activities, you can witness two illumination shows on the Tivoli Lake. One is based on the saga ”The Sibyl’s Prediction”, a dramatic Icelandic Ragnarok tale from Nordic mythology – the other on Danish composer Jacob Gade’s renowned classical piece, “Jalousie Tango Tzigane”. As a supplement to the illumination shows, 11 swans will light up the lake to salute H.C. Andersen’s fairy tale “The Wild Swans”. You can also experience famous Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson’s work “Little-Sun-Swarm”, that consists of 33 changing lights in various geometrical shapes levitating in the three tops. See more information about the new winter season in Tivoli here.
2nd reason: Guided tours in heated canal boats
Every night at 19.00 you can join Stromma Denmark’s guided canal boat tours in both English and Danish along the waterfront and learn more about the artists, the installations and the historical sights. If fully booked, another boat will sail at 20.00. See more details and book your canal tour here.
3rd reason: Guided walks along light route
Every Friday night at 19.00 architect and lighting designer Jesper Ravn, who holds a special interest in darkness, guides a walk along the light route in both English and Danish. Numerous light installations embrace the harbour, the streets and beautiful historical buildings of Copenhagen, and will create a poetic and magical atmosphere in the city.
4th reason: “Coloured smoke under bridges”
With the use of smoke and coloured light, artist Hans E. Madsen creates new urban spaces on the vaults, in the air and the water under several of the bridges at Slotsholmen. The smoke pulsates every 2 minutes, so take a deep breath and wait for the full effect.
5th reason: “The Door” in Copenhagen/Helsingborg
The Door is an installation consisting of two free standing interactive doors serving as portals into a parallel world. When opening the door, you will encounter digital smoke, and you can catch a glimpse of another world. By using your body, you can move the smoke, and suddenly you will see a full picture of Mount Everest or the Great Wall of China for example. Occasionally, the door on the other side of the strait will open, and the image will switch to a live feed with people you do not know in another city. The two doors connect people and help to bridge the gap between cities.
For more detailed information about the festivals, visit http://copenhagenlightfestival.org/
and http://dromljus.se/index.php/in-english
