The premiere of A DREAM THAT BELONGS TO NO ONE by American composer and performance maker Asa Horvitz graces the Grey Space in Het HEM.

Starting at sunset and set to the slow fade of light on one of the longest days of the year, A DREAM THAT BELONGS TO NO ONE interweaves group dances and the bowing of long wires tuned to the resonant frequencies of Het HEM’s historic building. Spectators are invited to sink into this landscape of images and sounds - drift, and let the hours pass, dreaming alone yet together with others.

The performance is accompanied by a booklet that comes with a ticket that is later available in Het HEM’s bookstore. This booklet considers images and dreams from a variety of historical and contemporary perspectives, rooted in personal anecdotes and family stories. And by doing so it proposes that we consider dreams and images as autonomous, independent presences, part of the greater ecology of life on Earth.

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*...sometimes a dream gets all over my body and won't leave me alone. It's sticky or rough or just a constant pressure on my chest, stomach, and groin. The image and feeling linger for days and something, slowly, almost imperceptibly, changes in me. Then I think Ibn’Arabi, who wrote of the Alam-al-Mithal, a layer of reality in which dreams and images exist without us.

The presences in the Alam-al-Mithal are not made up but have their own desires and needs. (There's a similar idea in Plotinus, in Ficino, in some forms of contemporary psychoanalysis, in Chiara Bottici). It’s interesting that a dream is always whatever image. It's specific, absolutely exact in its details, but it doesn't matter what it is. What matters is that it arrived, grabbed me, and came from somewhere, I can't say where, but I can feel that it needs attention.

Performers bow long wires tuned to the resonant frequencies of the space, creating a sonic landscape in which the audience is invited to sink in and let the hours pass. Through a process (score) in which songs, gestures, and physical actions are rearranged and looped, performers create an environment for whatever images to arrive, be listened to, argued with... *

– Asa Horvitz

The artist Asa Horvitz is based in Amsterdam and studied composition with Alvin Lucier and Anthony Braxton. He lived and worked in New York City from 2013-2019, before graduating from DAS Arts in Amsterdam in 2021. He is joined by an international group of dancers and musicians based in Amsterdam who created the performance through a long process of working with their own night dreams, and will bring this unique experience to Het HEM.

Practical information:

Grey Space at Het HEM

9pm - 1am, bring an extra blanket if you like

With and by: Szymon Adamczak, Rosemarie Allaert, Nahuel Cano, Asa Horvitz, Maria Mavridou, Keyna Nara, Oneka von Schrader, Venuri Perera, Camille Verhaak

Advice: Joachim Robbrecht, Anne Breure Custom shirts by Le&Zei Nails by Le Van Hung

Produced by Golden Trout Wilderness Co-production/Residency support: SPRING Performing Arts Festival, SIN Budapest, Crushing Borders Network, Het Huis Utrecht, Het Makersfonds, Province of Utrecht, Frascati Theatre, DAS Arts / DAS Theatre, The Camargo Foundation, MacDowell

Thanks: Silvia Bottiroli, Andrea Bozic, Scott Gibbons, Jaxyn Randall, Esy Casey, Cara Hoffman, Het Huis, Grzegorz Reske & Marta Keil