See my dress

See my dress by Karstein Solli Productions had the artistic aim to provide children younger than three years the opportunity to experience art, enjoy artistic experience and a multilayered artistic expression.

In See my dress they could experience a complex scenic expression based on installation, dance, sound/video and sculptural costumes.

The installation was placed within a gallery room/museum or theatre, organised in a way to challenge the adult and the child to enter the art experience. This broke with the principle of stage/seats and the conventional expectation of being able to consume an experience.

In See my dress by Karstein Solli Productions the formal aspects constituted the primary conceptual theme. In other words, the components installation, dance, sound and video in itself gave the foundation for developing the theme and the content. Through the theme the children’s options for experiencing are challenged through the senses. Sound is central and the visual elements in the dress itself are to give the children impulses.

The dress as installation can be interpreted as a female character or a mother character, but as intended, there is no unambiguous presentation/symbolic definition of this. The dress is also a place, a kind of tent one can enter and exit.

See my dress displays instruments that can awake curiosity and wonder. The dancers play with the possibilities arising in the interaction with the musician. The production examines an artistic dialogue with toddlers and adults through use of sound and seducing images, colours and movement.

The production was performed during the Ultima festival in Oslo and has also visited festivals in Hungary, France and Italy.

Sources: Karstein Solli Productions, http://www.karstein.no/se_min_kjole.html, 20.11.2010

Underskog, http://www.vagant.no/kalender/25950_se-min-kjole-karstein-solli-produksjoner/forestilling/32986, 20.11.2010

Glitterbird Project, http://www.dansdesign.com/gb/norway/kjole.html, 20.11.2010