Bridge: In
Search of the Silver Violin
Lana Nasser, MA,
Consciousness Studies/Dream Studies certificate, JFKU; BA
Psychology/Fine Arts Cum laude; GWU. Lana is a researcher and an
artist (dancer/poet.) She performed, lectured and led workshops in
the United States and the Middle East. Born and raised in
Amman-Jordan, she is currently living in Berkeley, CA.
Abstract
Stage 1:
A dreamer awakens to find herself
in the realm of the muses of art. She inspects herself and finds
that she is in fact a bridge. Inspired by her own dreams about
bridges – the literal and the symbolic – the dreamer embodies her
own dream character and ventures into exploring the chambers of
her imagination, and the many rooms of the collective unconscious
as expressed in the art works in the exhibition. Just like dreams,
where even with successful incubation, one has little control over
surprises; the performer will not have any knowledge of what is on
display (unless shown to her in a dream of course). She will only
know that she is a bridge (character), in search of a silver
violin (motivation) As she dances between the imagination of
fellow dreamers, she asks herself what it means to be a bridge,
what is one bridging, and how does an individual dream fit in the
grander tapestry of dreaming? In preparation for the performance,
the dancer will incubate dreams of being a bridge, imagine the art
that will be on display, and listen to dreams around the theme of
the conference ‘Dreams building Bridges;’ as shared by members of
JFK East Bay Dream Theatre Group, the World Dreams Peace Bridge on
the web, and Culture Dreaming at The Dream Institute of Northern
California.
Stage 2:
The
performance is both an experiment and an adventure; it aims at
creating a dream-like state, where the first performance sets the
stage to which the observers are later invited. Once in the
imagination of the dreamer-artists, the body becomes the bridge,
and voice is found in dance, in song and in play. The observers
who wish to participate in the second stage re-enter the art
exhibition (ideally the next night – or later on in the same
evening) in character (a dream element) and with a task (inspired
by a dream), where the only rule is to stay in character and to
use very little words; to suspend judgment and logic and to
create; freedom in movement, where one can sit, stand, or even fly
– in the realms of dreams, arts and imagination.
