Did you know that animals dream?

With “Heidi’s Dream”, GNOUS! are taking a dive into the magical world of sleep and dreams in the animal kingdom. Three musicians and a video artist create a multi-layered audio-visual immersive experience where animals are the protagonists, their habitat is the stage and stories are being told through their dreams. From dolphins that sleep with one eye open to mice that seem to be running in their sleep, we’re taken on a journey through a fantastical setting of sounds, images, and text relating to sleeping animals. The performance takes us through magical, colorful changes of scenery with the use of video live feed and laser-cut miniatures in combination with live music and pre-recorded soundscapes. Throughout the performance, we meet different animal characters and enter their dreamworld. When Heidi –the much-loved octopus– changes so many colors as she sleeps, how many dreams is she having at once? And how loud can Chet, the giraffe, who does not have a voice, sing when deep asleep? 

At a time of biodiversity and habitat loss due to intense human activity and rapid climate change, the team attempted to find a way of raising awareness on our relation to non-human beings and to this planet through imaginative, fun and colorful storytelling. And for that, we turned to the beautiful world of creativity, imagination and dreams. Starting point of the research was the book “When Animals Dream: The Hidden World of Animal Consciousness” by David M. Peña-Guzmán, which gathers research around dreams in the animal kingdom in an attempt to point out that animals may have certain types of affect, consciousness and memory. Combined with wider empirical accounts of animals’ different sleeping habits, we created an animal troupe, each character with its own ways and dreamworld.