Björk performs at Chase Center in San Francisco on Feb. 5, 2022. Courtesy Santiago Felipe.

SAN FRANCISCO — You can look at utopia as an ideal to strive toward, or you can caution about what will happen if people don’t strive for an ideal. Perhaps Utopia, the 2017 album by Björk, had a similar duality. Her striking concert/theater hybrid “Cornucopia,” based on the album, certainly presented both sides: The hope and the ominous warning. Following three shows in Los Angeles, the avant-garde Icelandic multi-genre artist brought the production to San Francisco on Saturday for the first of two concerts at Chase Center.

Directed by Lucrecia Martel and Björk with co-creative director James Merry, and with fascinating projection design elements by Tobias Gremmler and stage design by Chiara Stephenson, “Cornucopia” debuted in 2019. You can call it a concert, sure, featuring 19 songs—most from Utopia, but a handful with similar climate-change-centric themes cherrypicked from her songbook (even non-Björk fans would have no trouble picking out which ones; they’re the ones that got the loud applause on Saturday).

But what made the show unique was the constantly moving, evolving, morphing nature-centric projections, the woodsy arrangements (with 18-member L.A. choir Tonality, Icelandic flute septet Viibra, harpist and two others) and the spectacle of it all—which included not just Björk’s dresses (one of which looked like a collection of dandelion puffballs) but the performance. At one point, the percussionist used falling water while striking floating bowls with a mallet. At another, a large metallic hoop was lowered from the rafters and revealed to be a flute that required four flautists to play it simultaneously while Björk sang and spasmed inside it.

Björk performs at Chase Center in San Francisco on Feb. 5, 2022. Courtesy Santiago Felipe.

The imagery recalled “FernGully: The Last Rainforest” or “Avatar.” The arrangements and visuals would have fit other art forms rather easily; think San Francisco Ballet’s “Nutcracker” land of flowers, or the Van Gogh projection mapping exhibits that are all the rage right now. The singing and music were pure Björk.

A love for nature coursed through the show, starting with a birdsong, crashing waves and chirping bugs as the audience filed in. Those sounds weaved in and out through the night. The choir, which would end up being a significant part of the show, added layers of melody to the often atonal singing of Björk and opened the show without her. The members, clad all in white, performed a piece originally delivered as a speech by climate activist Greta Thunberg at the U.N. Climate Action Summit.

“How dare you? People are suffering. People are dying,” they sang, their voices shifting from angelic to foreboding. It was the sole part of the evening in which the projections didn’t pull your eyes from the performance. Next, there was a recorded performance of Björk singing “Family,” about broken connections and relationships, but in the context of this show probably had more to do with the world itself. Afterward, the curtain behind the group was revealed to be translucent, with the musicians behind it. For much of the show, the curtain (actually a set of curtains) would zip back and forth, adding gauzy texture.

Serpentwithfeet and Björk perform at Chase Center in San Francisco on Feb. 5, 2022.

As for the projections, picture the work of Georgia O’Keeffe syphoned through a hallucinogenic haze. During “Utopia,” they looked like dancing tropical flowers or alien millipedes. During the euphoric “Arisen My Senses,” tendrils or roots vibrated all around on the screens. On “Claimstaker,” a nest-like bramble of twigs grew to take up all the space from stage floor to the rafters. There was also a “Flintstones”-like hut at the back of the stage, with an egg-shaped opening and windows, in which Björk or another musician would sometimes enter to perform. That, too, was used as a projection surface.

Following an atonal “The Gate,” the show grew and intensified from each passing song (minus a respite here or there). “Venus as a Boy,” an older track, was sung only with the backing of a single flautist. While Björk spent chunks of the show toward the back of the stage, she performed several songs like “Isobel” on a platform that jutted out into the crowd, dancing to the crowd’s delight. Later in the show, the flautists joined her on the platform, while a circular flute hoop lowered over here. She danced and sang “Body Memory” while they spritely played around her.

Some of her rawest, most emphatic singing came on “Hidden Place,” which was performed largely a cappella with just the choir. For “Blissing Me,” Serpentwithfeet came out to sing the most melodic lines of the night. He was dressed in a flowing white outfit, like the choir, but it was percussionist Manu Delago who stole the attention with an elaborate setup that included pouring water from bowls and striking other bowls with mallets for added thumps.

Björk performs at Chase Center in San Francisco on Feb. 5, 2022. Courtesy Santiago Felipe.

“Mouth’s Cradle” was another highlight. On this ancient-sounding, cacophonous song, everyone was seemingly performing something different—the choir was melodic, Björk on another plane, the percussionist raging away on a hand drum, and there may have even been a car alarm at one point. Yet those musical lines intersected numerous times throughout the song.

The encore began just like the first act of the show, with a message delivered by Thunberg; this time personally (as a projection) and more directly at the older people ruining the world for younger ones because of their greed. It was sobering in a way, but luckily this audience had Björk to provide some solace at the end with “Future Forever” and “Notget.”

Follow editor Roman Gokhman at Twitter.com/RomiTheWriter.