Saturday 23 May
Join us for the celebratory launch of Season Two with festivities unfolding across the estate, including food, live performance, and gatherings in the palace grounds. Entrance to performances is included in the price of your ticket.
12.30–1pm · Collapsed Concert · Palace Chapel
1.30–2pm · Shadow Theatre · Carriage Barn
2.15–2.45pm · Shadow Theatre · Carriage Barn
3.30–4pm · Feast or Famine · Corn Barn
Collapsed Concert · Palace Chapel
In the chapel at Valdemars Slot, The Centre for the Less Good Idea presents a “collapsed concert” - part artist talk, part sermon, part performance. What begins as a formal introduction to the programme gradually unravels through dance, music, and embodied interruption.
Performance · Shadow Theatre · Carriage Barn
In the Carriage Barn at Valdemars Slot, Thulani Chauke’s immersive film installation The Shadow of Space (2025) transforms the longstanding tradition of shadow and silhouette theatre into a living performance environment. . Dancers Magnus Christoffersen and Amelia Coleman, alonside the rest of the cast, explore memory, identity, and layered histories through movement, music, and sound. Inspired by archival traces of apartheid and colonisation, the work invites audiences into a participatory space where frozen histories are brought back to life. Outside performance hours, visitors are invited to interact with the theatre throughout the season.
Performance · Feast or Famine · Corn Barn
In the Corn Barn at Valdemars Slot, Bronwyn Lace’s large-scale film installation Feast or Famine (2026) is brought to life by a full cast of performers in an improvised work of music, movement, and collective rhythm. Blending European classical traditions with South African protest songs, the performance draws on the power of song and dance as acts of resistance and renewal, while percussionist Micca Manganye and accordionist Andreas Borregaard gives voice to everyday objects through sound.
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The performance programme is developed through a creative residency with The Centre for the Less Good Idea. Bringing together South African and Danish artists, the programme unfolds across the palace and grounds through live music, film, dance, and shadow theatre.
Artists in Residence from The Centre for the Less Good Idea:
Bronwyn Lace (visual artist)
Anathi Conjwa (singer-songwriter)
Micca Manganye (percussionist)
Neo Muyanga (Impresario, composer)
Local Collaborators:
Andreas Borregaard (accordionist)
Halina Wigocka Wamberg (cellist)
Polina Fradkina (pianist)
Amelia Coleman & Magnus Christoffersen (Svendborg BalletTeater)
About The Centre for the Less Good Idea
Founded in 2016 by William Kentridge and Bronwyn Lace, The Centre for the Less Good Idea is shaped by Kentridge’s experimental methodology. Rooted in improvisation and cross-disciplinary collaboration, the Centre embraces the ‘less good idea’, allowing unexpected turns, and even failure, to become part of the work. For its first major residency, Valdemars Slot Arts Foundation invited five artists from the Centre to relocate from Johannesburg for an intensive period of research and development. Their spring residency culminates in a series of performances unfolding across the opening weekend, developed in dialogue with the estate’s archives and historic landscape.
Since 2024, the Centre’s programme has been led by Neo Muyanga, working alongside SO | The Academy for the Less Good Idea, directed by Athena Mazarakis, and The Centre Outside The Centre, led by Bronwyn Lace. Recent projects include presentations at the Royal Academy of Arts and Barbican Centre, London; Komische Oper Berlin; and REDCAT, Los Angeles.