Lecture by Olav Harsløf at the LIBRARY of Fougaro

on Wednesday 15 October 2025 at 7pm | FOUGARO ARTCENTER.

The Department of Performing and Digital Arts of the University of Peloponnese hosts at στο FOUGARO ARTCENTER Olav Harsløf, professor at the Department of Performance Design of Roskilde University, for a lecture on:
Phantom of the Operas in Sydney and Copenhagen: Interactive Performance Structures

 We know that the arts can inspire one another. Yet it seems they can do more than that. All signs suggest that the fundamental yet less visible cohesion in one art form can be illustrated and explained by the cohesions and structures in another. We could describe these structures and their cohesion as "performance structures", i.e. as basic, shared and interactive creative structures—for instance, shared between the spatial/visual and the aural/musical forms of art.

The lecture by Olav Harsløf aims to explain these structures and affinities by focusing on two Danish architects: Jørn Utzon, who designed and constructed the Sydney Opera, and Henning Larsen, who designed and constructed the Opera of Copenhagen. It focuses also on their friends and colleagues Kjeld Bonfils and Max Brüel, composers, musicians and architects. Finally, it focuses on the source of inspiration behind all these: the Danish architect Poul Henningsen, who seems to have been the Phantom of the Operas in Sydney and Copenhagen!

This lecture will be of special interest to researchers and students in the fields of Performance Studies, Theatre, Music, Literature and Archaeology.
The lecture will be in English, with Greek summaries; it will be given at the LIBRARY of Fougaro.

Support: FOUGARO ARTCENTER

About Olav Harsløf
Olav Harsløf has taught as professor at the Department of Performance Design of Roskilde University in Denmark. Before that he was head of The Danish National Academy of Theatre and the Danish National Conservatory of Rhythmic Music. He has edited, along with Dorita Hannah, the book Performance Design (2008) and wrote the chapter “Phantom of the Operas in Sydney and Copenhagen”. Together with Erik Kristiansen he co-edited the collective tome Engaging Spaces – Sites of Performance, Interaction and Reflection (2015) and wrote the chapter on “Space as Provocation.” He is the author of the book The Great Festival: A Theoretical Performance Narrative of Antiquity’s Feasts and the Modern Rock Festival (2020). His forthcoming book (2025) is on Perform Design Act, in collaboration with Dorita Hannah and Jon McKenzie.