Recipients of the Hans Christian Andersen Award 2019 are:
Award Winners – The Hans Christian Andersen Award 2019:
Ivy York Möller-Christensen, Denmark
for her outstanding Hans Christian Andersen research and transmission in a Danish-German context.
Pivot, Denmark
for the show “The 5 Paper Cuttings” 2018 and for several other dance performances since 2005.
Andersen Premio & Festival, Sestri Levante, Italy
for many years of promoting new fairy tales and for outstanding festival events in the name of Hans Christian Andersen
Ivy York Möller-Christensen
With books, reviews and lectures, Ivy York Möller-Christensen has been at the forefront of international Hans Christian Andersen research for decades. Already her PhD-thesis from 1991 established her as leading expert on Andersen’s relationship to his German-speaking readership. The book later published under the title Den gyldne trekant. H. C. Andersens gennembrud i Tyskland 1831-50(1992), taught us how important Germany was for Hans Christian Andersen’s international breakthrough in general.
As a professor of Danish teaching at the Europa-Universität in Flensburg, in the ancient German-Danish border region of Schleswig, Ivy York Möller-Christensen represents the strong ties between two closely related cultures like few other scholars today. She has made Hans Christian Andersen a symbol of our common Danish-German and indeed European cultural heritage.
Pivot / Mette-Louise and Jesper Kryger
For more than a century, it has been entirely in the spirit of old poet to transform his fairy tales also into ballets, and the Hans Christian Andersen Award has consequently and previously been awarded ballet productions. But with the Pivot’s performance in 2018, the Andersen universe was transformed into an unprecedented variation of well-known themes and in an unprecedented mix of genres, dance and movement, music and sound, written word and vibrant paper cuttings by Torben Jarlstrøm Clausen. “The 5 Paper Cuttings” was a performance that challenged all our senses and brought some of Andersen’s always thought-provoking ideas to life in an updated style – to put it mildly!
It testifies to Pivot’s special understanding of Andersen’s poetic universe, that his fairy tales, his own personal experience and understanding hit us right on target in “The 5 Paper Cuttings”, in the middle of an overwhelming bombardment of senses, including ballet shoes and hoverboards, “In Denmark I was born” and Gwen Stefani, and “ real ”paper cuttings as well as high-tech visuals! The committee of The Hans Christian Andersen Award finds that all this was a result of Pivot’s strong artistic ability and of a long-standing series of dance productions with modern interpretations of Andersen both in Denmark and abroad.
Andersen Premio & Festival
On his first international journey, Andersen made a visit to the small town of the Italian Riviera, Sestri Levante, and really made it a small fairy tale. Although he spent only one evening in October 1833, he described it as “a fairy-like night of beauty”! Likewise, it is a fairy tale in itself that now for the 22nd year, a festival is being organized in the name of Hans Christian Andersen and for the – hold now – 52nd year, fairy tale awards are to be given in the poet’s name. In connection with the establishment of the fairy tale awards, one of the city’s two coves – as beautiful as you only find them in Italy – was even named “Baia delle favole”, “The Bay of Fairy Tales”. You find the name on all official cards.
In addition to the fairy tale award, the city of Sestri Levante has since 1998 every year in early June organized a 4-day festival in Andersen’s name, where children and adults together may experience music, theatre, reading, acrobatics and many more exciting shows in the city’s beautiful settings. – Also Odense’s own Hans Christian Andersen Parade has been invited to perform their famous show. The festival has grown larger and larger over the years, and in recent years it is estimated that the 4-day program attracts about 80,000 guests. In its lifetime, the festival has thus far exceeded one million spectators
The Award Ceremony takes place on Tuesday, April 2ndat 15.30 at the Concert House in Odense.
The Award will be motivated and presented by the Minister of Cultural Affairs, Mette Bock, the Italian Ambassador in Denmark, Luigi Ferrari and the Mayor of Odense, Peter Rahbæk Juel.
The presentation of the awards will be accompanied by ballet dancing, singing, music, stand-up, and reading.
Further information, please contact Susanne Wiese Kristensen, cell +45 22 48 68 59.
