Culture News in Brief: CIS and Rygaards share bragging rights over singer tipped to win ‘X Factor’

In other news, an aspiring fashion designer has to share the credit for her success with Instagram

Mar 18, 2019

Copenhagen International School and Rygaards would appear to be making a habit of sharing famous alumni.

Denmark’s first man in space, Andreas Mogensen, got the ball rolling when he attended both schools in the 1990s.

And now Benjamin Rosenbohm, a former Rygaardian who is currently at CIS, is taking a giant leap into the unknown on the TV2 show ‘X Factor’, which he is a strong favourite to win.

Following in Embrace’s footsteps
Rosenbohm’s mother is from Germany and his father is from Madagascar, but he wouldn’t be the first full international to win the contest. The winners in 2016, the duo Embrace, were from Angola.

The multilingual student, who is also a long-term attendee at the Zealand musical theatre school SceneKunst, is 13/10 to win X Factor, according to oddset.dk.

A long way behind in the betting are Live Vogel and Kristian Kjærlund, who are both 13/4, and Maria and Bea, who are 11/2.

Moves like Fallulah: from Spotify to webshop to award winner
The Danish pop singer Fallulah collected the Artbeat Prize’s annually-awarded Talentprisen 2019 on Thursday – a prize given to outstanding Danish cultural communication – in recognition of her work last year launching Hello Sister, a feminist movement that has been working hard to bring more attention to women in the Danish music industry. Talentprisen is one of several prizes annually awarded by Have Kommunikation in collaboration with the Spar Nord Foundation since 2013, and it includes a cash amount of 10,000 kroner. The Hello Sister movement started life as a playlist on Spotify and quickly blossomed into a webshop.

Ghita Nørby outburst listened to over 100,000 times
Radio24syv’s unedited interview of Ghita Nørby, which began with the veteran Danish actress complaining about the equipment and doing her best to insult the journalist, was listened to over 100,000 times within the first 24 hours of its release last week on Wednesday. Radio24syv chief executive Mads Brügger told DR he was thrilled by the reaction, as “documentaries should ultimately give rise to discussion and disagreement”. Despite contrary early reports that the interview was cut short, it in fact went on for a hour, during which time Nørby talked about how she was often verbally abused by her own mother.

From student to designer in a flash thanks to Instagram posts
The power of Instagram cannot be understated. Just two years after completing her education as a designer at Margretheskolen, the 27-year-old fashionista Sofie Sol credits her recent employment by high-end Copenhagen clothing store Nørgaard to the exposure given her to work on the social media platform. Sol was contacted by Nørgaard in 2017 after it saw her work, and one interview later she had a contract to produce 16 dresses for the store. Fast-forward to the present day, and she now runs a workshop in the centre of Copenhagen, where she employs two of her former co-students and runs her own brand, Sofie Sol Studio.

OMD to mark its 40th anniversary with visit to Vega next February
British electronic band Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark are celebrating their 40th anniversary with a tour that will include a visit to Store Vega on 12 February 2020. Their set will no doubt include iconic tune ‘Enola Gay’ (see below), a classic 1980s tune written about the Hiroshima bombing that the BBC refused to play of children’s show ‘Swapshop’ because it thought it was a gay love song. Tickets cost 310 kroner from ticketmaster.dk. In related news, US singer-songwriter John Mayer is performing at Royal Arena on October 6 and the Jyske Bank Boxen a day later. Tickets start at 400 kroner via ticketmaster.dk. And home-grown metal act King Diamond is gracing KB Hallen on August 10. Tickets cost 450 kroner via billetlugen.dk.