There’s nothing I enjoy watching on film more than explorations in states of consciousness. Kubrick, Lynch, and Tarkovsky (to name a few) knew the power of this subject matter, and rightly so: narratively speaking, the consciousness micro-genre creates some of the most compelling stories, but rendering it on film requires an equally mesmerizing visual accompaniment (what’s Inception without Ellen Paige turning Paris over onto itself?). When story and image come together in this genre to weave a powerful double helix, we are left with my favorite human emotion: awe, which—by definition—includes dread. And what’s more dreadful than a strange dream?

Nowhere in the spectrum of consciousness is the canvas so blank and primed for dread as when we are in or around sleep. There have been hundreds of different attempts at rendering this state on film, and I feel lucky that the Campfire Poetry series from Monticello Park enabled me to use and explore dance as a dream state. I’ve always associated the art form with an ability to tap into a peculiar state of consciousness. It’s simultaneously experiential and performative: it feels good to the person doing it and it looks good (hopefully!) to whoever is watching. It’s the melding of performer and audience that makes dance particularly interesting, and when employed as a language to communicate the ineffable feeling of dreaming, there’s hardly a more beautiful form of expression.