An 8 day dance, art & spiritual practice retreat in subarctic Sweden, hosted by Northern Sustainable Futures

What if we were the end ones?
Residential Workshop facilitated by Dominique Savitri Bonarjee

📍 Moskosel Creative Lab, Sápmi, Northern Sweden

📅 April 17–25, 2026

Butoh Mutations x Northern Sustainable Futures

Join us for a new exciting chapter of the Butoh Mutations project in partnership with Northern Sustainable Futures, taking place in the remote landscapes of arctic Swedish Sapmì land (previously called Lapland). Our Somatic Retreat is a chance to be immersed in deep transformative practices that draw on spiritual wisdom, embodied inquiry, and inner paths of activism.

To face these times, somatic revolt has become more urgent than ever, because we cannot think our way out of this crisis. In Sápmi we take the via negativa of darkness through the ecology of practices that make up Butoh Mutations.

Our world is heading deeper into a crisis that for many, might still feel distant, only breaching our awareness through our daily newsfeeds channeling their way into our neurological subconscious, deep inside our bodies. Disbelief, hopelessness, climate-anxiety, doom-mentality. We want to form collectives, live communally, find shared solutions, we want to follow indigenous wisdom, because we know that the future must be collaborative. There are many ways and social attempts that highlight a shared sense of incapacity to face the immensity of this present moment in one body. But each body is a microcosm, reflecting the macrocosm. In this gathering, our bodies become ‘labor-atories’ for the somatic, spiritual, and energetic labour of remembering our (unknown) wisdom which will guide us through this transitional epoch with commitment and love.

But first we must die… ‘What if we were the end ones?’ is the speculative prompt of the first Butoh Mutations retreat in Sapmì. The founder of Butoh, Tatsumi Hijikata, said ‘Be born again and again, one birth is not enough…’ speaking from the darkness of the aftermath of the nuclear bombings of Japan. To be ‘reborn’ is to mutate the ‘self we think we are’ and to birth new potentialities into being. By facing our finitude and mortality with curiosity, reverence, and joy, we can encounter continuous unfolding in our own life, and through it move beyond collapse.

We follow a pedagogy of "staying with the trouble" (Donna Haraway), drawing us out of patterns and expectations into an embodied engagement with uncertainty and the unknown. The unique energy of Moskosel’s landscape and light nurtures introversion, darkness, shadow, to meet our unconscious, by diving into the molecular world of sensation (micro-phenomenology), intuition, and ancestral knowing. How can we embody what happens at the end by exploring the great taboo: death.

What to Expect:

· 8 days facilitation in eco-somatic movement, dance, breathwork, nondual philosophy and meditation and spiritual journeying in the spirit of Butoh's first phase of emergence

· 8 nights at Moskosel Creative Lab surrounded by forest and lakes. Accommodation is either in a wood cabin by the lake, a shared house in the village, or a shared dormitory-style room

· The possibility of seeing the Aurora Borealis/ Northern Lights

· Walking trails and campfires in the surrounding bogland and woods

· Access to Moskosel’s creative facilities including makerspaces, dance studio, private meeting, and meditation rooms

· Home-cooked vegetarian meals, tea, and coffee for 8 days

· Access to Moskosel’s bespoke sauna experience and hot-tub

· Free time for solo walks, cold-water swimming at the nearby beach, blueberry, and mushroom (experts only please) foraging, collective discussion and skills exchange, naps

Photo: Nicole Renou

Your guide

Dominique Savitri Bonarjee is an artist, writer, and experienced facilitator. She has studied long-term with first- and second-generation Butoh dancers, and is the author of Butoh as Heard by a Dancer (Routledge, 2024). She holds a contemporary art PhD focused on developing a spiritual-ecological embodied research methodology and has extensive experience leading large groups in intensive settings, including the durational performance Collapse. Her practice combines Butoh’s discoveries with eco-somatic and spiritual traditions, offering a contemporary path, less focused ob performance and more on embodied inquiry, ritual, and our relations with the more-than-human.

Savitri's artist website >>

Our retreat takes place in the breath-taking remoteness of the subarctic, offering time and space for a small group collective to form. The group is made up of souls that want to commune with uncertainty, who are willing to take stock of their own mortality, and who wish to share and witness their findings by moving, dancing, voicing the profound and unspeakable intimacy of endings, that birth beginnings.

Each day will involve a morning and evening meditation, a facilitated warm-up session, collective somatic tasks and dancing experiments, opportunities to ‘per-form’, that is give (tentative) shape to our discoveries and vulnerabilities within the holding space of community. The Moskosel Creative Lab is a former school and has a range of facilities for participants to rest, digest and create. There are makerspaces, a games room, a dance studio, a dark room, a sauna, a hot tub, walking paths, and no shopping whatsoever. Set amongst lakes and mires, we will apply our experiments to sharing our existence and being in relation to each other and our surroundings.

Accommodation Options

The workshop offers a variety of accommodation options to suit different preferences and budgets, all set within the beautiful surroundings of Moskosel Creative Lab, Sapmì:

• Dormitory Accommodation (Mattress in large shared room)

  Cost: approx. £720 per person

  Availability: 20 spaces

  Details: Basic shared accommodation. A good option for those on a budget.

• Shared Accommodation (House or Scandinavian Wood Cabin for two)

  • Cost: £850 per person

  • Availability: 15 spaces

  • Details: Share a cozy room in either a shared house or a traditional Scandinavian wood cabin. A great option for those who enjoy communal living and connection with fellow participants.

• Private Single Scandinavian Scandinavian Wood Cabin

  • Cost: £980

  • Availability: 1 space

  • Details: A private wood cabin for one, offering solitude and a serene environment to unwind and reflect.

• Private Double Scandinavian Wood Cabin (Double Bed)

  • Cost: approx. £1150 for one person

  • Availability: 3 cabins

  • Details: Enjoy a spacious wood cabin with a double bed for ultimate comfort with a lake view. You can also share this space with a companion for an additional £750, making it an ideal choice for couples or friends.

Each accommodation option is thoughtfully designed to provide warmth and inspiration, ensuring a restful and enriching stay during the workshop. Each cabin has an en-suite bathroom.

Prices include the workshop fees, accommodation, heating, and food budget for 3 meals per day.

For the first retreat there are 16 places available. Places are allocated through an application process to ensure a cohesive and diverse group. The retreat is for those who really want to explore their embodiment as a portal to living through crisis. While each person will be on their own journey, this is deep and intense work and requires trust and a desire to engage in collective processes.

Please click here to send an expression of interest and your first choice of accommodation.

This retreat is open to all bodies, dancers, non-dancers alike, diverse gender embodiments – women, menn, nonbinary, nondual and LGBTQ+.

All movement and meditation practice is adapted to different levels, pushing those who need challenge and supporting those taking tentative steps. The work is informed by Butoh, which more than a traditional dance, is a form of somatic revolt – A Rebellion of the Body. Butoh was initially informed by literature, poetry, visual art and originated in a poly-disciplinary milieu of boundary-defying brilliance. Savitri builds on her long-term research with some of the seminal first-generation practitioners and takes their audacity further, mutating Butoh through wisdom traditions of a syncretic heritage, along the path of nondual inquiry, as a living philosophy of subject/object collapse.

Part movement research workshop, contemplative retreat, and a space for personal and collective creative expression: the gathering weaves the visceral intensity of Butoh, the grounding of Daoist eco-somatic practices, the focused intensity of Vipassana 10-day silent meditation retreats, and some of the methods proposed by Julia Cameron in the Artist’s Way.

Schedule:

Arrive between 4-5:30pm on Saturday 18 April. Welcome dinner, meeting circle and evening meditation.

18 -25 April: daily activities with a half day break on 21 April.

24 April: final shared ritual ceremony

Depart by 2.00pm on Saturday 25 April (an extra night can be arranged, please let us know)

The daily schedule will be shared with participants a few weeks before the retreat.

Getting there:

The closest airport is Arvidsjaur, accessible from Stockholm. You can also arrive by train from Stockholm or Umeå.

Surrounded by endless lakes, forests, and reindeer, and under the dance of the aurora borealis, Moskosel Creative Lab, is a former school, now a vibrant arts centre, with dance and art studios and communal spaces.

The location of this retreat is what makes it unique. We will be hosted at the Moskosel Creative Lab by Northern Sustainable Futures. The area is remote and surrounded by lakes.

Dominique Savitri Bonarjee

artist/ facilitator

Gonçalo R. Marques

CEO Northern Sustainable Futures