PLASTIC FANTASTIC

Plastic Fantastic is an interactive solo dance performance for 10th grade and upper secondary school, created in collaboration between dance artist Jonathan Ibsen and Caroline Wahlström Nesse and Marius Kjos at Rom for Dans.

With the Barbie figure as a symbol, Plastic Fantastic challenges how the idea of perfection and ideals, and the expectations and conventions surrounding, for example, gender and sexuality, affect us—and how our freedom of action is restricted through the construction of “right” and “wrong.”

The performance is a portrait of a human being, a body that never quite does the right thing or fits in. How does one find oneself in a mainstream world where one constantly encounters preconceived ideas and notions of who one should be?

The space is filled with indecency and inappropriate behavior. Recklessly, Jonathan throws himself into something real, something strange, and something highly questionable, where questions of freedom and liberation circulate. Boundaries and norms are stretched and bent in order to find out—where is the limit to how different it is “allowed” to be?

Plastic Fantastic premiered 12th of November 2022 at Rom for Dans, and has later been shown at Oslo Pride, Koreda dance festival, and as part of ShowBox.