In a time of increasing complexity, fragmentation, and systemic crisis, how might we artistically and collectively sense and respond to the forces shaping our lived experiences? How can the body become a site of knowledge, not only for personal expression but also for collective understanding and transformation?

Choreo-Constellating is an emergent artistic practice that offers a response to these questions. Developed by artist and choreographer Liv Schellander in close collaboration with her peers, the practice interweaves choreography with systemic inquiry and constellation work, forming an embodied methodology for storytelling, sensing, and sense-making. Through this hybrid form, movement becomes a tool not only for artistic expression but also for mapping relations, exploring unconscious narratives, inviting speculative futures through the body, and engaging with socio-political and ecological questions.

In Animalariums’ Constellations Liv Schellander and Alexandra Wingate co-develop the method and artistic work. In collaboration with participating local artists for each unique performance on-site.

A Living Map: The Poetics of Relational Choreography

At its core, Choreo-Constellating operates as a kind of living map—a dynamic and relational choreography in which participants embody various elements within a chosen theme or system. These embodied roles might represent a place, a human or nonhuman being, a historical site, an emotion, a question, or a speculative future. Participants might become a surrendered body, soil beneath concrete, a glacier, a revolution, or a collective longing.

Initially, participants are invited to embody these elements without knowing what they represent. This opens up a space for intuitive exploration, where the body becomes a sensory tool for perceiving and responding to the spatial, emotional, and energetic dynamics of the constellation. Through movement, gesture, voice, and presence, participants share what they perceive, gradually unfolding the web of relationships between elements.

As the constellation evolves and the roles are revealed, a poetic dialogue between the known and the unknown emerges. This interplay encourages a deeper understanding of interconnection, interdependence, complexity, and the often-unseen forces that shape our experience.

From Somatic Sensing to Collective Inquiry

Drawing on methods from contemporary choreography, systemic constellation work, somatics, and neurophenomenology, Choreo-Constellating positions itself as both an embodied research method and a participatory performance practice. It resists linear narratives, instead privileging spatial, relational, and multisensory forms of knowing.

Participants do not merely “perform” ideas—they live and move through them, experiencing the tensions, alignments, and frictions that emerge in real time. The nervous system becomes an active participant, attuning to shifting dynamics and enabling deep listening—not only to others but to space, history, memory, and sensation.

In this way, Choreo-Constellating becomes a form of collective embodied inquiry, where abstract themes such as climate change, historical trauma, or political transformation are processed through the body. The resulting constellations are not static representations but evolving, co-created rituals that offer space for shared meaning-making, emotional digestion, and imaginative speculation.

Between the Real and the Imagined

While the practice is grounded in theoretical frameworks—phenomenology, neurocognitive science, systemic theory—it also embraces the visceral, intuitive, and ritualistic dimensions of artistic engagement. It creates space for the magical, the ephemeral, and the unspoken—those dimensions of experience that often elude language but are deeply felt.

In each session, whether in a workshop, installation, or research setting, Choreo-Constellating invites participants into an altered mode of attention: a collective attunement where gestures carry meaning, silence speaks, and spatial arrangements echo the emotional landscapes of a group. Through guided improvisation and poetic facilitation, participants are offered the freedom to explore how the body can serve as both a receiver and transmitter of meaning.

Articulating the Ecological and the Political

One of the most potent applications of Choreo-Constellating lies in its ability to address urgent societal and ecological concerns in an embodied form. In the project Animalariums’ Constellations, which tours as part of Perform Europe 2025, the practice is applied in site-responsive performances, workshops, and research encounters. Here, Choreo-Constellating becomes a method for engaging with themes such as climate crisis, land-based memory, multispecies cohabitation, and postcolonial ecologies.

The constellations offer space for bodily negotiation of complex questions. The process acknowledges trauma—both human and more-than-human—and invites participants into speculative gestures of repair, reimagining, and resistance.

By bringing people into collective spatial awareness, Choreo-Constellating also nurtures a kind of interdependent presence—a stance that contrasts with the individualizing and isolating tendencies of contemporary culture logics. It invites us to sense our interconnectedness not just as a metaphor but as a felt reality.

In 2025, Animalariums’ Constellations will journey to Norwegian Sápmi, Sweden, and Austria, including the Arctic landscapes of Guovdageaidnu and its indigenous Sámi community, the post-industrial site of Ställbergs gruva (a decommissioned iron ore mine), and the Future Farm at the edge of a growing Vienna. These sites shape the energy and focus of each performance through their unique social and ecological contexts. Creating a series of performances named Constellation #2, Constellation #3 and Constellation #4. The first Constellation #1 Dawn obliges us to dream was premiered at 3:e Våningen September 2024. 

The project is a collaboration between Animalarium, Elle Sofe Company, Ställbergs gruva, and WUK Performing Arts, with support from Perform Europe, Swedish Arts Grants Committee, Davvi – Center for Performing Arts, and Dáiddadállu.

Where the Practice Lives: Platforms and Communities

Since 2023, Choreo-Constellating has been shared at diverse platforms including Diffractive Dialogues at Tanzquartier Wien, Backpulver Think Tank for Contemporary Dance, and Raw Matters Tender Steps.

In 2025, workshops and research labs will be facilitated by Animalarium Dance Collective across multiple sites: Trollhättan and Ställberg in Sweden, Future Farm Vienna, WUK Performing Arts in Vienna, and Guovdageaidnu/Sápmi, with support from PRODA Nord (Norway). These formats range from professional training to community-based gatherings, always centering embodied co-creation.

To Be Continued: A Space for Embodied Futures

Choreo-Constellating offers a practice-based invitation to reimagine how we relate—to ourselves, to others, and to the world. In times of instability and uncertainty, it becomes increasingly important to cultivate spaces where complexity can be held, where relationality can be felt, where past, present and future can be explored and sensed not only through thought but through movement, presence, and collective resonance.

It is not just a method—it is a ritual of attention, a dance of perception, and a gesture toward possible futures.