To think like a dream, materialize in places, shift between appearances, and make (dream)sense.
Here the space is a morphing narrative, where stories are delayed, layered over each other, or audible elsewhere at times. Objects absorb stories and act as a sounding board. Rather than a chronological account, it is a collage where things fall out and start a life of their own. An effort to find a tone of voice and transitions that evoke the quality of dreams. A dance project as a cover to learn more about one’s family heritage, to share with a beloved.

This performance is a collection of dreams, recorded from pregnancy until the first year and a half after birth. The characters that visit this mother’s sleep share their stories, as they dance with exit signs, microaggressions, spend time with Surinamese Indigenous dream practices, and transform into watercolours, a thermofoil, fertility statues, cats, make labor positions, some gestures, a dream.

In this piece I work with the uncanny and surreal of dreams to estrange the norms of parenting and family life.
In this work I am inspired by Surinamese Indigenous dream practices. There are gaps in my knowledge about it, and I can’t retrieve some of this culture the way my ancestors practiced it, although I would have liked to pass that knowledge on to my kid. Using the surreal of dreams, I fill in the gaps, making time to think and play around with possibilities, a reflection on how to move together.

Choreography: Jade Stenhuijs
Music: Jonathan Starr