A DREAM IS A HOUSE for remembering the future

A DREAM IS A HOUSE for remembering the future from Biba bell on Vimeo.

A DREAM IS A HOUSE for remembering the future, created in collaboration by Biba Bell (Dance) and Joo Won Park (Music), is an hour-long immersive performance created for twenty-one Wayne State University (WSU) dancers and the WSU Electronic Music Ensemble in Minoru Yamasaki’s McGregor Conference Center atrium. A DREAM IS A HOUSE brings together sound, light, movement, embodiment, and storytelling together in the cathedral-esque modernism of Yamasaki’s architecture, evoking creative research driven by memory palaces, buildings as bodies, dream scenes, dancing with ghosts, and personal and collective ritual making. – from Vimeo site

My ensemble (EMEWS) and I worked with Biba and her Dance Class to make a site-specific, multi-channel piece over the Winter 2022 semester. The above is an excerpt of a 60-min piece. McGregor Hall’s architecture and acoustics were ideal for music and movement. I am happy about the result. The in-person experience was something unique, but Noah Eliott Morrison‘s team documented the essential experience of the piece in the video.

Although EMEWS has worked on the piece since March, I started working on it in August 2021. Biba and I spent Fall 2021 trying ideas and finding voices. The video below is a shorter version of A DREAM… presented at an end-of-semester showcase.

A dream is a house for remembering the future 12.07.21 from Biba bell on Vimeo.

The Fall version’s 15min stereo audio expanded to a 60-min piece for a laptop ensemble and a guitarist, each emitting sounds from a portable amp. The music evolved and adjusted every week as the choreography changed, and the ensemble ended up performing based on the score below.

I think music can have an altered life. I plan to perform an audio-only ensemble version in an upcoming show. Let’s see how it goes.