Measuring the Dream/IDEAS

Measuring the Dream
IDEAS grant with Yolande Snaith & Ryan Welsch
black box theater, QUalcomm institute, UCSD
Artistic Director/Choreographer/costumes-Yolande Snaith
• Scenic Design
• Co-Vroom video design (content) with Ryan Welsh (programming)
• Assistant Scenic-Justin Humphres

Measuring The Dream is a multimedia performance/installation based on The Dream, a poem by the 17th Century Mexican nun and writer Sor Juana Inez De La Cruz. The tragic life of Sor Juana Inez De La Cruz and her poem The Dream form the foundational text, choreographic, musical, and visual world for this project. The poetic landscape of images, emotions, and the feminine philosophy generate a rich universal and timeless theme. In The Dream Sor Juana enters into a fantastical confrontation with her own questions concerning the meaning of existence and the nature of the universe. Through sleep and dreaming she journeys through a landscape of powerful metaphorical and symbolic images that ascend to the very peak of her imagined obelisk, but then she falls without attaining understanding. Upon waking she is renewed and filled with wonder.

The structure and content of this poem provides a potent and multidimensional field of possibilities for creative exploration and evolution of a unique, vivid and transformative performance experience. Through light/sound/movement this interdisciplinary performance explores the poetic nature of intelligence, merging the essence of Sor Juana’s unique historic voice with the invention of a new contemporary artistic language actuated by the new technologies at Calit2/IDEAS.