Dancer wins big prize: – I’m completely blown away

Sarah Aviaja Hammeken was honored with a Reumert for her powerful dance performance ‘Whiteout’. A performance about suicide that has given hope to young people and put Greenlandic dance on the map.

Last Saturday, Sarah Aviaja Hammeken suddenly stood on stage in front of the Danish theater and performing arts industry. Here she won a Reumert – Denmark’s largest award for performing arts – for her dance performance ‘Whiteout’.

– I haven’t prepared anything, she says, before bursting into laughter on stage and continuing:

– Wow, I’m completely blown away. Thank you so much to my friends and family for supporting me.

Jury’s reasoning

It was so sensually beautiful that it almost took your breath away. A boundless no-man’s land of snow, feather-light tumbles and airborne choreography. Four modern dancers moving organically through a visual blizzard with blinking eyes and hooked hands. Grief, suicide, shame and loss were given body and movement, as we were engulfed in a swirling storm of emotions.

In an interview with KNR, Sarah Aviaja Hammeken says that she did not expect to be nominated – and certainly not to win.

– It’s crazy. I didn’t expect that at all. It’s just huge. I still feel like: is this real?, she says laughing.

And she’s not the only one who’s happy about the victory.

Ruth Montgomery-Andersen, owner of Qiajuk, is working to establish a dance scene in Greenland. She knows Sarah Aviaja Hammeken personally and sees the award as a huge victory not only for her, but also for all of Greenland.

– The most important thing – from my point of view – is the representation that she is. Children and young people can see that it can be useful to be a dancer, to want to dance and experience dance. That is something she helps to create, says Ruth Montgomery-Andersen.

Focus on suicide

The dance performance ‘Whiteout’ is about what it’s like to lose to suicide, and how we deal with it, explains Sarah Aviaja Hammeken.

And it’s not an easy subject to build a dance performance around, says Ruth Montgomery-Andersen.

– It made the subject of suicide very close, but not overbearing. You could live and be in your feelings and work with them, which is the point of the dance performance.

According to the jury’s reasoning, Sarah Aviaja Hammeken won the award because the judges were ‘swallowed up by a whirlwind of emotions’. And according to Ruth Montgomery-Andersen, it is precisely an expression of her great talent that those emotions can be expressed in the dance.

– I would say that Aviaja always chooses incredibly beautiful dancers who can do something; who have technique and emotion, and she is not only a very skilled choreographer, but also able to get her messages out through movement.

Greenland on the world map

Ruth Montgomery-Andersen is certain that this year’s Reumert Prize will have great significance for Greenland.

– It allows Greenlandic dance to put itself on the world map and especially the Nordic map. It is something that Aviaja and the rest of the Danish community are working very hard for. I know that all the trained Greenlandic dancers, both here, in Denmark and in Norway, are incredibly proud of what she has done.

If you missed the performance, you can see Sarah Aviaja Hammeken’s new performance, which premieres in the fall.

– We are going on a Greenland tour in the fall with the show ‘Speechless’. It is a show for children and young people. We will start on the east coast and then the west coast. It will be exciting, she says.

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