Monsterlandskap

Monsterlandskap is a choreographic encounter for the classroom — a porous and shifting landscape where monsters are not just imagined, but embodied, sounded, built, and gently questioned.

Through dance, sound, guided play, and acts of spatial transformation, three performers and a chorus of children move through a terrain shaped by what is visible and what resists being seen. Children, as audience members and co-creators, are invited to alter the room, to give voice to creatures, to move with or against the pulse of what emerges. What begins as a landscape becomes a body, becomes many.

The work is haunted by the act of naming, by the weight of perception.
It lingers in the space between visibility and belonging,
where a body can be made strange — even in your own home. Even in your Motherland.
Memories of being mistaken, misplaced, misread — of walking through public space and being received as other, not-quite-human — are folded into a constellation of monsters:
The night monster who thrives in darkness,
The lion who may or may not be waiting just around the corner,
The trash monster that feeds on the earth’s forgetting,
The mite, who lives on skin and thinks we are the wild.

Credits

Monsterlandskap was created in close collaboration with year 5 at Stenbergaskolan in Ljusne, whose thoughts, movements, and monsters shaped the work from its earliest steps. Participants:
Karar Al-Zibala, Freja Andersson, Edvin Bergendahl, Ella Bodell, Ida Dahlström, Cèline Darakji, Mohamed Farah, Thyra Gard, Timm Gjermundshaug, Melker Krüger, Mille Lund, Ronja Malmgren, Collin Norling, Alice Oppitz, Göta Ruprecht, Lia Sjöström, Anna-Karin Tanous, Beteal Ukbamikael. Teachers: Caroline Lundström, Jamina Jansson and Nelly Blomqvist.

By Destiny Johannah af Kleen, Master’s Programme in New Performative Practices, Stockholm University of the Arts (SKH)

Performers: Destiny Johannah af Kleen, Robin Dingemans, Won Myeong Won
Composer: Lars Lengquist
In collaboration with year 5 at Stenbergaskolan in Ljusne

Supervisor: Robin Dingemans

Supported by:
Region Gävleborg, the Municipality of Söderhamn, the Municipality of Gävle, Gunvor Göransson’s Cultural Foundation, the Helge Ax:son Johnson Foundation, and Stockholm University of the Arts.

Bio

Destiny is a choreographer and artist whose work is rooted in social care, relational practice, and a deep curiosity for people and their stories. With a grounding in activist and political perspectives, she approaches choreography as a way of navigating shared space — both physical and emotional.

Working with "place" as a point of departure, Destiny has developed a number of participatory and site-responsive projects that explore public space, community, and bodily presence. Through her ongoing work with DansPlats Skog — an artist-led production space and dance stage in Hälsingland — she engages critically with concepts such as place-making and the Urban Norm.
In recent years, Destiny has created installations and touring site-specific works throughout Gävleborg County, danced with horses, constructed dance floors deep in the forests of Hälsingland, planted forty trees for consolation, and invented and patented two hugging machines.

More about her work: www.yodestiny.com