“SALTICE – origami opera” connects children with professional artists for an interdisciplinary production which includes storytelling, music, dance, paper art and videography. The story, written by Susanne Felicitas Wolf, is inspired by the folklore of upper Austria, especially the salt mines and the ice caves. The vision of composer and director Ruben Zahra adopts paper as the primary material for the costumes, props and set design through the application of origami techniques, pop-up sculptures and paper engineering. Three internationally renowned paper artists from Japan, Wales and Germany have been commissioned to create original artworks for SALTICE, contributing a minimalist and essential aesthetic to the director’s contemporary vision.

The story of SALTICE follows the adventure of Katharina and her brother Martin who both help their parents harvest rock salt from the mountain. Their father suffers an accident in the salt mine and the two siblings set off on a quest to find the ‘flower of life’ in order to restore his health. Along this quest, they meet several characters; like the witch Frau Perchta and the cave bear who help the children … as well as villains who obstruct, like the dragon of the Alps, the Bergstutzen. This journey takes Katharina and Martin through a magical land of ice and salt mountains, palaces of ice, clouds of ice and finally the flower of life. This fairy-tale landscape is represented through pop-up paper sculptures that are revealed on stage by the narrator and projected as the backdrop scenography of the performance.

The minimalist and contemporary aesthetic of the mise-en-scène is reflected in the music of Ruben Zahra and the dances choreographed by Silke Grabinger. The music is scored for a children’s choir, a string quartet, one percussionist and an electronic soundtrack. SALTICE has been designed to facilitate mobility and only 2-3 artists would need to travel for international touring. The rest of the artists and will be engaged from the host country. The script is assigned to the storyteller who will narrate the translated text to the native language of the host country. To facilitate mobility even further, the choir is not singing “words” but vocalising (ahh, ohh, mmm … etc.). Therefore the choral parts do not require translation.