SI(x) emerges from our lived experience with mental health challenges and explores themes of Madness, perception, spirituality, care, and destigmatization. The piece moves between vulnerability and empowerment, asking how we hold one another through unseen or misunderstood conditions, and how expanded states of perception might also carry wisdom.
Mediumistic, ritualistic, state-based movement.
2,000+ pounds of sand.
Candle fire.
Interactive video projection.
Live spatialized and tactile low-frequency sound.
This work is meant to be felt in person.
Premiered at Vancouver International Dance Festival 2026
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8SUlIcgJDw
Upcoming performances:
Festival of Augmented Dance 2026 (Finland) November 28th, 2026 https://taikabox.com/festival/ with workshop 11/25 as part of European Capital of Culture 2026
https://oulu2026.eu/en/culture-programme/festival-of-augmented-dance-oulu-dance-hack/
SummerWorks Performance Festival 2027, Helen Gardiner Phelan Playhouse, Toronto, Ontario, Canada - August 10 - 13th , 2027 (exact dates TBC)
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SI(x) opens an intimate window into the volatility and sanctity of Madness, where divergent ways of sensing and being illuminate the porousness between inner and outer worlds. Co-created by Caroline and Sammy Chien-MacCaull of Chimerik 似不像, this visceral dance-technology work transforms lived experience of psychosis into an embodied meditation on perception, care, and resilience.
Within a hexagonal field of 2,000 lbs of sand, candlelight, and interactive projection, every element becomes choreography: the shifting grains, the flicker of flame, the pulse of light and hexaphonic sound orbiting through space to envelop the audience. Spoken invocations are received through clairaudient attunement with the audience, transformed visually and sonically, dissolving meaning into vibrational landscapes.
Together, Caroline and Sammy compose an environment that listens and responds; body, light, and sound are entwined in real time. Their partnership anchors the work’s otherworldly energy in trust and tenderness, inviting the audience to contemplate the quiet strength of Madness from within.
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CONTENT WARNINGS:
Loud sound, intense strobe lights, open flame, dust and depictions of psychosis and altered mental states.
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