Photo credit: Sarah Fuchs
"a process of self re-examination that’s equal parts reflectively existential and purely physical.” - FLOOD
“Disco decadance” - POP MATTERS
Today Ora the Molecule has announced new US dates this May in both LA and NY. They include a headline set at Pianos in NYC on May 9th, a DJ Set at Camille’s at Bellwether in LA on May 15th and also an opening set for Midnight Magic at Teragram Ballroom in LA on May 16th. Full details are listed below.
These dates come after the winter release of the Deluxe version of her acclaimed 2025 album Dance Therapy, that is out now digitally via Mute. Dance Therapy (Deluxe) features the original album in its entirety as well as 10 inventive remixes and reworks of the tracks by an array of talented collaborators including Lindstrøm, Midnight Magic, Valentino Vivace and more.
Purchase or stream Dance Therapy (Deluxe) HERE.Ora The Molecule recently won the prestigious Spellemann Award (Norwegian Grammy) for ‘Best Electronic Album’ and last year embarked on a phenomenally successful US tour supporting Cut Copy, playing to sold-out rooms and consistently winning over crowds with her irresistible on-stage dynamism.
Dance Therapy is Schjelderup as a lone mastermind, conceiving a new world all her own. On this album, she wrote, recorded, and produced everything, save a handful of co-production contributions from Mathias Risdal.
The driving force behind Dance Therapy stems from Schjelderup’s experience as a DJ, a career that has steadily ascended since the pandemic. She imagined herself being behind the decks, while simultaneously seeing herself in the audience, and asking: “What would I play for that Nora in the crowd to make her day just a little bit better?” Fueled by classic late ‘70s club sounds and Italo-disco, this became the retro-futuristic fever dream of Dance Therapy.
As in the past, she decamped to her studio, located in a cabin in the woods outside of Oslo. There, she processed a series of severe losses, the therapy of the album’s title becoming literal.
Dance Therapy became deeply conceptual, with Schjelderup working off a prompt: If we encountered intelligent life in outer space, how would she present herself? “Would I be this mundane shit — I’m constantly heartbroken, I don’t know what I want to do when I grow up,” she says. “Or will I try to rise and be the highest version of myself possible? To be as glamorous and fabulous as I could?”
Schjelderup’s intergalactic vision drew upon a broad array of references. While exploring a “study” of electronic pioneer Mort Garson’s Mother Earth’s Plantasia, she began favoring digital reproductions of various modular synths and theremin. Italo disco star Raffaella Carrà inspired Ora The Molecule becoming a more full-blown character separated from but symbiotic with Schjelderup herself, while the music of Annie Lennox helped shape Dance Therapy’s narrative heft.
The resulting body of work is rife with ebullient, infectious dance music, but also remarkably complex meditations on grief, mortality and heartbreak - all transmuted through the lens of Ora’s cosmic inner journey to discover her own sense of self, human or otherwise.
And, at the end, Schjelderup has finally created a new transcendence: both Nora and Ora but neither, a deeper sense of herself and the disco superhero she has willed into being, a new identity from everything that came before.
Dance Therapy is out now on limited edition hand-numbered white vinyl, black vinyl, cassette and digitally. Purchase it HERE.
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