Lustholmen 2025 - Programme introduction
Lustholmen is a festival of dance, choreography, music and art that celebrates the beginning of summer with lust, life and light. Over six days, between the 11th and the 16th of June, the festival's 2025 programme explores the nooks and crannies of the Skeppsholmen island, taking place both outdoors and indoors, in a collaboration between island neighbours MDT, the Public Art Agency Sweden, Skeppsholmens folkhögskola and Filmform.
The festival revives the island's old name from the late 16th century, Lustholmen. Legend has it that at that time it was a place of recreation, decadence and pleasure for the early Vasa kings and their lovers and friends. Its function later shifted, being instead used as a military-base island for around 150 years, until it was repurposed as a Stockholm cultural-hub.
On Skeppsholmen, old decorative torpedoes lie still—but no longer as innocently. Once just relics, they now seem to carry warnings, as Sweden joins NATO and the West prepares for conflict. Some aspects of the military past seem to be returning in a new shape, and the Swedish arm exporting industry is more relevant than ever as the world arms itself.
This year's festival reflects these and other contradictory aspects of the history of the island and of Sweden. We approach it alongside critical perspectives on violence and defence, but also through embracing the need for care, humor, celebration and indulgence.
Together with the Public Art Agency Sweden we present a unique collaboration, which enables three site-specific works. Two of them have been developed exclusively for the festival context, by artist and baker Javon Bennett and choreographer Andros Zins-Browne, and one is an already existing work that gains new shades when performed within the boundaries of the festival, by the duo Byström Källblad. Together, these shows make up the festival's Island Dialogues section, which is free of charge.
In Andros Zins-Browne's sDuel, the history of Skeppsholmen meets dance. The different layers of the past are drawn back to the island to play. The work is part of a series where the first work ‘duel c’ was made on another small island in a big city – Governors' Island in New York – in a choreography that stirs towards a blending of care and violence.
In City Horses by Anna Källblad and Helena Byström, fifteen women dancers take the island at full gallop. The work is a vivid commentary on the unyielding monuments we see in our cities, where men on horses dominate the public space. In City Horses, the order of power is broken when the wild horses take over the streets and squares, creating an immaterial and moving monument that lasts over two hours. At the Lustholmen Festival, the work becomes an invitation to reframe the island's military history.
The festival's film programme, with material from Filmform's archive, explores the relationship between art, culture, war and armaments, and how these spheres interact and are used as tools in the creation and strengthening of nations. The programme includes the films Sicherheit by Saskia Holmkvist, Ellen Nyman and Corina Oprea and Scented Rooms by Shauheen Daneshfar, followed by a discussion.
Saga Saga by Liz Kinoshita draws attention to personal stories and the historical political warfare against women's bodies, sexuality and reproduction. The performance is a celebration of the wisdom, survival tactics and courage of women who have come before us and will come after us.
How emotions and presence can constitute a kind of political resistance in a neo-fascist era is, among other things, the main exploration theme of Alma Söderberg in the work Infinétude, which is as much a concert as a dance performance. Choreographer Mona Namér also relates to the power of emotion, exploring infatuation and obsessive longing in Limerence. The Masked I by Michael Bekele takes us on a pseudo-academic, philosophical, poetic and comic excursion while Eleanor Bauer hosts our own version of the radio show “Spanarna”’ with a lucid panel called Tendencies.
The cabaret as a format emerged at the end of the 19th century, in a politically depressed France, as a cultural antidote. It also bubbled up during World War II Germany as a space of resistance. In 2025, in today's Sweden, we need a cabaret more than ever! Lustholmen's cabaret is organised by Wallmans Ballonger and offers a packed cavalcade of appetising butts, hoarse house bands, seductive dancing and impressive performances of dubious character. On the track of decadence, the inimitable choreographic duo/fake band/shapeshifters Beauty and the Beast (Amanda Apetrea and Halla Ólafsdóttir) follow with The Selkie Poetry Reading, a pornographic dystopian poetry reading that combines the beauty of darkness with everything in between. And speaking of excesses: artist and baker Javon Bennett invites us to feast on a giant, shimmering cake and an edible installation called Show me your teeth. Last but not least, the festival ends with the international guest performance Blue Roses where Thibault Lac gives a camp-scented, body-centred dream journey, an exploration of a queer swamp-like garden that is both repulsive and alluring.
Check the full day by day schedule here.
A warm welcome!
// the MDT team
PS: Sometime during the festival, the missing Backstreet Boys member Harris will appear, keep an eye out!
Festivalpass (pay what you can) + tickets available at Billetto.
CREDITS
Curators for Island Dialogues. MDT in co-operation with the Swedish Arts Council: Annika Enqvist, Anna Efraimsson, Edi Muka
Curator for Show me your teeth by Javon Benett: Unn Faleide
Curator for Filmform's film programme: Mmabatho Thobejane
Curators for Wallmans Ballonger: Terry Johnson and Stina Nyberg
Curator of the entire festival programme: Anna Efraimsson
Production: Unn Faleide
Production intern: Yara Teipel
Communication: Cecilia Tümler
Technical coordination/management: Björn Kuajara
Graphic design: Jonas Williamsson