You don't dance because you're happy.
You're happy because you dance.

Music, community and loving chaos mark VEGA’s 30th birthday, as Apollonian Circles transforms Store VEGA into an ecstatic celebration on 4 September.

When VEGA turns 30 in September 2026, the anniversary will be celebrated with a birthday party like no other. On Friday, 4 September, VEGA and Apollonian Circles invite audiences inside for Apollonian Circles – VEGA 30th Birthday Celebration: a staged concert experience in which music, scenography and audience merge into one large, collective celebration.

For one evening, Store VEGA is transformed into a living feast. At the centre of the hall stands a long table that functions as both stage and gathering point. The instruments form part of the scenography, the musicians sit around the table, and the audience stands close together, becoming an active part of the party. There is no clear division between stage and floor; the music emerges from the community and grows organically, just like at a party. It begins subdued and expectant, then becomes increasingly insistent, until it tips over into dance, ecstasy and loving chaos.

At Apollonian Circles – VEGA 30th Birthday Celebration, you enter a room that bears traces of a party that may already have taken place: empty bottles, crumpled tablecloths, the silence after the night. Through lighting, scenography, costumes and performative elements, the birthday is reborn together with the audience and develops into a sensual, shared movement in which no one can stand still.

To mark VEGA’s 30th birthday, the Apollonian universe invites a number of special guest soloists to contribute to the celebration’s musical and performative diversity.

The evening will feature:

Drum duo with Mikkel Hess and Henrik Vibskov
Piano Chronicles with Nikolaj Hess, plus a special guest soloist (TBA)
Apollonian Circles in Store VEGA with guest soloists Jeuru and Mette Lindberg, among others (TBA)
Afterparty

Apollonian Circles was created by Hess Is More and has, since 2019, evolved as a circular concert format in which the audience is invited very close to the musicians and becomes part of the musical circuit. The music moves between orchestral experimental pop, collective improvisation and rhythmic trance, with repetitions that slowly build intensity. The musicians respond to one another and to the audience, and the music arises in the moment as a shared, bodily experience.

The concert is a tribute to VEGA as a concert venue of three decades, to music as a meeting place, and to the special magic that occurs when we let go together — an invitation to celebrate history, the present and community.

Because, as they say in the Apollonian universe:
You don’t dance because you’re happy. You’re happy because you dance.