The Dancing Moominvalley - A Choreographic View on Tove Jansson's Illustrations and Texts

This article aims at highlighting Tove Jansson’s literature from a specific viewpoint, related to dance and moving. It looks at her work as choreographic constructions, dance-like impressions created by both images and text.
Dance was a close and important form of self-expression for Tove Jansson, and her interest in dance and movement can be seen by looking at her work, too. In Moomin books dancing expresses many feelings and phases in the stories – joy of life, escapism, rebellion and liberation. Jansson however uses choreographic expressions also when describing and illustrating events that are not actually dance but associate to dance, such as movements of nature and the characters' positions and postures that seem pronouncedly expressive and aesthetic. Many characters in Jansson's books have an individual movement language. When shaping these impressions Jansson draws ideas from certain dance conventions such as social dancing, ballet and modern dance With dance and dance-like expressions Jansson implies exceptional nuances in her narratives and art. With them, she is also able to express her own sense of humour.