The Wanderer

People can dance while dreaming in The Wanderer.

When I began this project, we had been in quarantine for half a year. Life exclusively indoors made me aware of how stagnation amassed in my body. I sat at my desk all day, in essentially the same posture. I went to cook and eat. I laid down in bed, fell asleep. When I woke up, my sluggish muscles and joints were stirred by a rush of memory from the dreams that just left. Their momentum lingered for a while, and in this time, I pondered the dissonance between my body and mind. My dreams were so vivid, yet they resided in my body so inertly, for when we dream, our bodies become temporarily paralyzed to protect us from acting out our dreams. What if my dreams could express themselves through my body? How would I move then?

In this animated film, I am fantasizing about people dancing while they dream. I wanted to explore how the poetic state of dreaming can be expressed physically and cinematographically. Dance is movement that ignores efficiency or utility, just like dreams are suspended time that negates productivity. The dream dance exists in tension with our everyday life, where most of our movements serve functional purposes.