Special Event / 2022 / Australia / 50min / Creative Directors Sal Cooper and Kate Neal

An aural and visual excursion into both the musical fugue and the psychological ‘fugue state’, While You Sleep unites string quartet, piano, electronics, video and animation in a surreal counterpoint of music, movement and image where nothing is quite as it seems. 

Exploring flight, memory and dissociation, While You Sleep is an escape from the present. 

Embracing the elaborate complexity of the musical fugue – where a phrase is introduced by one instrument and then taken up by others – the work weaves gesture, design, light and immersive visuals. Hand-drawn animation, live action, video and stop-motion are choreographed alongside the musicians on stage. 

Dark, subtle, surprising and moving, While You Sleep deftly probes the uncertain landscapes between grief and identity, reality and illusion.

“A work of dizzying complexity…recalls Georges Méliès and William Kentridge” – Dr. Thomas H. Ford