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On invitation from the MUNCH Museum in 2021, dancer Loan Ha, Venke Marie Sortland and I created a situation for one dancer and a group of very young kids and their parents for a gentle and sensory guided walk through the Monumental Sal, where Edvard Munchs largest and most monumental paintings are presented. The mediation starts on 6th level and the children and their families are greeted and invited in for a different meeting with the art.
Loan Ha´s costume is mainly made of rubber, inner tubes of bicycle tires… cut into long thin strips and sewn onto a blue cotton top and pants. The dancers body can be totally hidden, while she hides head, arms or is lying down. The body can move and it makes a water - wind kind of sound association. The material is an attempt to replicate or rather echo the paint strokes and the rubber is dyed with some of the different blue colors from the paintings. The energy and direction is also suggestive of as coming out of the 2 dimentional art work, as Loan Ha is bridging between our attention and the wast paintings. We watch her and we look at the motifs in the direction she is focusing…. She replicates some of the monumental physical postures in the different motifs. The wast outreaching sun i the painting: Solen. The central female caracter in Forskerne, and the mere feeling in Menneskeberget.
There is a huge soft blanket the visitors can sit and rest upon. The performative work is also an attraction to the other visitors to the museum. Sometimes we can register their gaze at the young audience and not on the mediator and that is somehow the hole point, to absorb the impact and different experiences in the Monumental room in the tension between the huge canvases.