SAUNA FESTIVAL – SJÆLLANDS ODDE
At the end of November 2022 and 2024, we invited around 110 people to a day with wellness, togetherness, performance, music, sound art, and gourmet – all situated in saunas and wilderness tubes on the old harbor at Havnebyen, Sjællands Odde in Zealand. The idea was to expand people’s experiences of what it would say to be together in a sauna and expand our senses by transforming the sauna to a performance space.
(DR TV-AVISEN (Prime Time News) – 18:30, 24. November 2024)
In 2024 the program was as follows:
Den Outer Sauna // Gourmet Sauna // Vølven’s Sweat Hut // Community song Sauna // Scrub Sauna // Whale Sauna // Karaoke Sauna // Puppet Theater Sauna // Shadow Sauna // Music Box Sauna // Gusjam // Farie Tale Sauna // Sauna Gus and much more.
In 2022 the program was as follows:
Trumpet shower // Gourmet Sauna // Quiz Sauna // Lecture Sauna // Adventurous Stories Sauna // Poetry Sauna // Sound Gus // Community Song Sauna and much more.
Food, beer, and wine were locally produced and made with local raw materials.
Steen Andersen was together with Petter Brandberg the initiator and coordinator of the festival.
The festival is a collaboration between local partners to strengthen the use of the sea, nature, the body, and social harmony in new ways. The festival is non-profit and any profits go to the next sauna event, and other cultural and social activities on Sjællands Odde.
Photos: Susser Preuss
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SAUNA EVENT – COPENHAGEN
Since 2015, Sauna Event has been inviting to a wonderful winter day in the name of well-being. Sauna Event was a one-day festival for do-it-yourself sauna builders, sauna enthusiasts, gus masters, music lovers, and all other Copenhagen citizens who were interested in a joint social and intimate event. At Sauna Event, the guests could relax in communal saunas, experience sauna guys, enjoy the sea view, and the starry sky, bathe in warm wilderness tubs and have a cold thrill in the harbor while listening to electronic tones in the winter darkness or experience different sound universes in specially selected saunas.
The festival was created through an interdisciplinary collaboration in 2015 between PB43, Danske Naturister, and Det Danske Saunaselskab, and in 2016 the festival expanded with new partners, including Illutron, Sjællandsgade Badet, the festival for electronic music Strøm and Det Runde Bord. In the following years, additional partners joined and in addition to Copenhagen, the festival was also held in Aarhus, the second-largest city of Denmark.
Steen Andersen was together with, among others, Iben Elmström, one of the co-initiators and co-coordinators of the Sauna Event in 2015 and 2016.
Around 300 sauna guests participated each year and the festival was run by a large group of volunteers. The last Sauna Event was held in 2019.
Photos: Maria Dembek // Robin McAulay