Lekquiem - 100 children danced Mozart's Requiem

Life and death side by side.

Signatur Foundation Sweden granted 2023 support to the project LEKQUIEM, in which around 100 school children joined 60 choir singers, four professional dancers and a symphony orchestra to create a work of art for all ages in the large hangar at Subtopia in Botkyrka.

The idea of artist and director Charlotte Engelkes and conductor Christian Karlsen was to allow children to meet and express themselves to symphonic music, perhaps for the first time. During five school weeks, dancers and children did meet and then worked together to create one big dance concert. An important focus was that children’s own thoughts on life and death should be told to Mozart’s famous Requiem from 1791.

The project LEKQUIEM was a production of the non-profit association Astarte in collaboration with the non-profit association Scenit Produktion, Subtopia, Västerås Sinfonietta, Kungsholmen’s music high school and Dansens hus.

In the project, over 100 children in primary and middle school took on Mozart’s unearthly beautiful Requiem. A celebration of life through movement and music.

The result was performed on Sunday 19 November 2023 at Subtopia’s venue Hangaren in Botkyrka. The performance was about 60 minutes long.

It was a dance concert with symphonic meetings for young people, where children become dancers, bodies and voices to Mozart’s well-known, painfully beautiful Requiem: LEKQUIEM!