Hagay Dreaming

Experience the premiere of this theatrical performance by artists Shu Lea Cheang and Dondon Hounwn drawing together ancient myths with futuristic technologies.

Through dance, movement, instrumentals, ritual and chant, Hagay Dreaming recounts a story based on ancient legend connected to the Truku indigenous culture of Taiwan. In her dreams, a hunter meets a group of spiritual non-binary beings called ‘Hagay’, and they pass on ancestral knowledge of living, weaving and hunting. On stage, performers move within intricate light beams projected by a choreography of lasers.

This new theatrical production is an artistic collaboration by Taiwanese American artist Shu Lea Cheang and indigenous performance artist and practicing shaman Dondon Hounwn. Connecting Cheang’s new media practice with Hounwn’s inheritance of tribal ballads and rituals, Hagay Dreaming combines advanced technologies with traditional ways of performing tribal culture. Using lasers and motion-capture technology in its staging, tribal legends and personal stories are told in new ways.

Shu Lea Cheang often creates sci-fi narratives and in Hagay Dreaming the pair present an artistic vision for a future reality based on the ‘Gaya’ living principle of the Truku people. For them, Gaya is a spiritual world that is everywhere and everything, in which all living creatures are understood as connected and non-binary.