Himkok ties new Oslo cocktail menu to live ballet
A one-night performance with the Norwegian National Opera and Ballet has left its mark on the Oslo bar's menu: 13 cocktails, each paired with its own piece of choreography.
Himkok, the cocktail bar and distillery in Oslo, has turned 13 drinks into a permanent menu built around a single night of ballet.
The bar unveiled Himkok x Movement on 27 September 2026, staging a one-off performance inside Sentralen, a converted 19th-century bank hall in the Norwegian capital. Dancers from the Norwegian National Opera and Ballet performed a piece of original choreography for each of the 13 cocktails on the new list, before the drinks returned to the regular Himkok menu the next day.
French choreographer Anaïs Touret led the movement work with creative director Jens Carlos Schwartz, who worked with Himkok on a 2023 fashion-and-mixology project. Composer and lighting designer Sebastian Schmiedl wrote 13 original scores for the performance, one per drink, with costumes by Julianne Johnsen and vocals from Norwegian singer ARY.
A cocktail list built like a ballet programme, not a drinks menu.
Thirteen drinks, thirteen dances
Each cocktail on the Himkok Oslo cocktail menu carries its own routine. A beetroot-juice take on a Nordic negroni was danced in red costume. A rhubarb-and-aquavit riff on a French 75 and a cognac-based espresso martini sharpened with Pedro Ximénez sherry both got solo pieces built around their flavour profiles rather than their presentation.
"We are fascinated by how the composition of a ballet routine ... can be mirrored by the creation and experience of a cocktail," says Paul Aguilar, Himkok's head of research and development. The project, he says, "marries the two, while celebrating Norwegian culture and origins."
A workaround for Norway's ad rules
Norway bans most forms of alcohol advertising, which leaves bars with few conventional ways to promote a new list. Himkok, which runs its own in-house distillery alongside the bar, has leaned on cultural collaborations instead of marketing campaigns for several years, in a Nordic scene increasingly tracked by World's 50 Best Bars voters, with the 2023 fashion project as its template.
The ballet ran for one night only. All 13 cocktails stay on the Oslo menu, and Himkok now plays short clips of the matching choreography on screens at the bar before guests order, so the dance survives the single performance even if most drinkers never saw it live.
