“Nyam chiem” Reconstructing and Performing Nightmare: A Dance Research in Performance of Sleep Paralysis

This paper is a documentation of a practice-based⁴ dance work of the creative process, research and performance presentation of the piece “Nyam chiem.” The paper and the dance work are part of my required thesis project in the Masters of Fine Arts degree in dance at the University of Maryland, College Park. Dates of performances of the work were October 15th and 16th 2015, in the Dance Theater at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center.

In the first chapters, I share my personal view of the topic and phenomenon known as sleep paralysis. I note the numerous accounts of the phenomenon ranging from scientific research to cultural beliefs and to personal accounts. My choice to focus on my personal experience is deliberate because I feel as though sleep paralysis as a condition can only be experienced, felt and talked about in a very personal way, furthermore, there are certain stigmas about the meaning of sleep paralysis in Nigeria, my country of birth. In this paper I include scientific research and various personal accounts, but in the choreographic work I was primarily informed by my personal experience. To this end, I will be weaving my personal journal, memories and thoughts intermittently into the fabric of the narrative writing style of this thesis paper.

In the early 1990s, when I was just only eight years old or nine (my memory is a little fuzzy on that), I remember a celebration of the life of someone who had died in the family. Like every Nigerian burial ceremony, extended families and friends trooped to this event. I can vividly remember that on the morning after the big dance and chiefs Isie-gware.⁵ I woke up to the chants of “Amen, Amen,” the normal Nigerian Pentecostal fire and brimstone prayer led by my mother with the usually accompanied singing and speaking in tongues. As soon as I was awake I was quickly aware of a feeling of energy directed at me. I could tell from the prayer points⁶ that the chanting was about something I had done or something that had happened to me during the night.

I still have memories of the nightmare and at the time I believed only I knew about it, until my mother started saying, “All the demons of the night, which pay an unsolicited visit to Ogaga⁷ I command you to die by fire.” I flinched in instant shame. I quickly closed my eyes, feigning to be asleep, until I was tapped by one of my uncles to wake-up and join the prayer.

What followed was weeks of prayers and embarrassing altar calls on Sunday services at the church, and with ceremonies that looked like exorcism,⁸ with holy water sprinkling and holy oil rubbing.

For months and years I continued with dreams and frightful nightmares and sensations of different presences in my room and the feeling of people touching me at night. At the age of 24 when I was able to afford and own a smartphone to browse the Internet, my first search was something around “what is the experience of not being able to move while asleep in the night called?” I got many search results but one stood out: sleep paralysis! I went further to search for what sleep paralysis meant. The explanations sent shivers through my spine because they felt accurate and I knew I wasn’t the only one experiencing this phenomenon. It became a life goal for me to both exonerate myself from the claims of being demon infested and abnormal and to reclaim my humanity.

I come from a multi-religious community. My cultural background incorporates social values, rituals from traditional religions and orthodox worship. The magic of the mixture of Christianity, Islam and traditional religion is very strong. In those religious practices dwells a huge amount of beliefs in supernatural beings, and other superstitions. Part of these superstitious beliefs includes the notion that an individual member of such group is clean and free from sinful, demonic and unrighteous blemishes. Therefore, I’ve always been curious about the idea that one has to be free of any blemish.

I met dance at the University of Benin when I was in my second year studying Theater Arts, when we were assigned to study and perform the Tiv Swange dance.⁹ I had been very fascinated with the style from a very young age watching the Tiv Kwaghir¹⁰ puppet dancers and the Swange dancers dance on the local television channel NTA Abuja (Nigerian Television Authority). The flow of movement from the spine into the torso and the staccato tapping of the feet that sends a wave through to the hips making them sway from side to side felt like a natural part of my entire being. I watched the television performances attentively. I couldn’t have been happier when my class was charged to study this style for the semester. I thought this project would be a good way to start dancing, something I never thought I would do. After our first showing to the professor, I was chosen to be the group leader and also the lead singer. We performed Swange at the examination. From then on I talked, ate, slept, read and danced dance. My life completely changed and the dance studio became my new home.

Five years after I graduated with the BA Degree in Theater Arts, I decided I needed more skills to be able to teach dance. I made plans to attend the University of Maryland, College Park.

After a twenty-five hour-long flight I landed in the United States of America, traveled to my new home, I was exhausted and ready to just sleep. I was concerned that there would be a sleep paralysis episode because I was so tired and indeed there was one. After I woke up, I knew I had had an episode and I thought my housemates would wonder what a freak had come from Africa. The episodes continued even as I settled down in my new environment. Sometimes, I asked myself “What do they think is happening to me when they hear me screaming and calling for help? Do they actually hear and not say anything in the morning,” I wondered.

In my second year in the program I began to become aware of what I could say with my dancing. I toyed with idea was of making a piece about my sleep paralysis. I created a site-specific performance at the Stamp Gallery at the University of Maryland under the guidance of Sharon Mansur. The piece was about confinement, tying it to the lingering idea of sleep paralysis. I later took this idea of confinement into the creation of “Nyam chiem.”

Below is a raw note and journal entry from my earliest articulation of the idea:

My artistic aim is to create in-performance an episode of sleep paralysis. I visualize the stage, in this case, the Dance Theater at the Clarice Smith Performing Art Center at the University of Maryland College Park, to be the mind of an individual who is experiencing this. The brain, as science has presented, is the most complex unit of the human system and is the tangible tissue found in the skull. While I use the brain and mind interchangeably, it is important to note that the brain is the physical tissue that generates the thought faculty of the thought, perceptions, will, emotions and imagination. A look at the cerebral functionality and its process in all its complexity will enhance this work as it grows. I am looking at using the Dance Theater as a site for this work, placing the audience in different parts of space and performing the work in and around them. This is because the work explores the mind and environment, and the Dance Theater is the environment and the mind is where all this is taking place. The audience is experiencing actions in this surreal environment as it unfolds. (Emoghene, Thesis Propasal and Personal Journal 2014).

From the personal I began the exploration of scholarly research about sleep paralysis.

In this chapter, I am concerned with both philosophical and biomedical research in psychology, and how that translates to dance making. But the perspective from which I write is autobiographical¹¹ Conversely, I use the personal pronoun “I” to acknowledge that the bone of autobiographic research is reflexive practice.

1. In a personal autobiographical research, how does sleep paralysis intersect with my dance creation?

2. How can I translate my experiences and autobiographical research of sleep paralysis to a dance creation?

3. What can sleep paralysis be a metaphor of and might that have meaning for others who experience my work?

What brought me to this research?

I have suffered from sleep paralysis all my life. It has been both embarrassing and a stigmatic experience for me while growing up, mostly because from the community where I’m from, sleep paralysis is seen as evil; the sufferer is demonized.

There are so many definitions about what sleep paralysis is. Different disciplines and cultures see the phenomenon differently. Scientists have defined it using the scientific methods, and individual cultures have also described it from their worldviews and philosophical methods.

I particularly relate to James Allan Cheyne’s definition of sleep paralysis and his works on the subject as well. Cheyne defines sleep paralysis as:

Cheyne and Pennycook further examine sleep paralysis as:

It happens at nighttime.

It happens in your dreams.

It heightens your senses.

You develop a new way of knowing¹².

Hallucination, hallucination, hallucination.

The experience of sleep paralysis for me is divided into these three parts 1. Visual- Hallucination: the feeling of sensed presence in your room 2. Tactioception: the feeling of choking, pressure on the chest and

Visual-hallucination: In the experience of sleep paralysis, one always senses an unwelcomed presence in one’s room.

Tactioception: With the sensed presence in the room comes the feeling of attack. The scary invader is thought to be able to attack physically the experiencer, thus causing an enormous amount of fear.

Audio-visual hallucination: This comes with the thought that one is able to hear voices, hear sounds, and even have a conversation with any sensed presence. In my personal experience, I have had situations where I screamed out loud to any such sensed presence in an attempt to dispel them.

Tracing the Origins of Sleep paralysis:

Looking at the origin of sleep paralysis in a broader and more general frame seems unclear; one of the reasons being the associated stigma as reiterated in Gonzalez:

Sleep paralysis is regularly brushed under-the-carpet due to many factors: one being stigma and the huge reliance on cultural beliefs, religion, and religiosity. Biases towards individual cases persist.

The research area in sleep paralysis, however, came to light in the modern research of the 1900s on dreams and factors that create the whole phenomenon. Adler describes:

I was curious to know if there were any dance forms and or performance activities created about sleep paralysis. As far as I could tell using an Internet search, I found that there were none. However, there was evidence of performance practices designed for the ritual cleansing of anyone found suffering from sleep paralysis in my community.

While creating this research-based dance performance, with little available research material, it became necessary to think of the idea as a self-reflection, using my personal experiences of the phenomenon as the basis, and primary, research tool. In research I conducted, a clear line was drawn dividing this topic into two broad aspects: 1. Scientific findings and reasoning surrounding the subject about brain function, 2. Belief systems of how people in different communities philosophize about the phenomenon, through oral narratives of the experience. Pennycook, Cheyne and others, pointed out:

Having divided the areas into two broad aspects, scientific and philosophical, I sought to devise a common ground amongst these two general areas.

One of the phrases that kept coming up in this research and also in a familiar personal experience is “the state of immobility:”

I identified with the research on the immobility of the human physical form in nighttime sleep. I also recognized the enormous amounts of distress this phenomenon contains. Belinki et al, identifies post-sleep paralysis distress as an aspect to consider:

To further elaborate on the effect of distress in sleep paralysis, Schredl talks about the high level of fear that comes along with the experience:

It is important to note that the above may be because sleep paralysis comes with a feeling of high visual effects, and with intermittent or consistent sensing of both auditory and tactioception.

Fear of the unknown: biomedical intersecting with philosophical I will start this sub-section by saying that I was hugely influenced by James Allan Cheyne’s¹³ work.

I wanted to know more about what dreams, hallucinations, and out-of- body experiences contain. However, reading about how the brain works and how the body goes into a state of paralysis before dreaming occurs was a relief. Knowing that dreaming is part of the experience as mentioned in the article, Rates and Characteristics of Sleep paralysis in the General Population of Denmark and Egypt:

I soon became aware that what Baland and Devon referred to as visual hallucinations and dreams were more than that in my sleep paralysis case. Dreaming, which might have to do with seeing or witnessing an experience, was for me a little more. It was like my dreams were something I had lived through and knew more intimately. The visual impression of hallucination and feelings of out-of-body experience is a huge part of sleep paralysis as reiterated in the article Spatial Characteristics of Hallucination Associated with Sleep Paralysis:

My fear came from the fact that I was surely going to re-live these terrifying experiences, of dreaming and hallucination.

Engaging with the topic in a movement based research, where the intricacies of this non-verbal form tend to be more paramount, was particularly challenging for me. I saw challenge every day through the creation process, but there was something that was constant for me, to “always talk about it.” Talking about it turned out to be my motto. The feeling that I could transmit my explanations and experiences through doing, talking, instructing, creating, dancing, moving and seeing was a gift I got from reading Tomie Hahn’s Sensational Knowledge: Embodying Culture through Japanese Dance (Hahn 2007). I was taken by how Hahn uncovers the nuances of learning, how she and other pupils in her story learn the Japanese nihon buyo dance, through different ways of sensing and through observing, listening, practicing and repetition. Hahn’s tool for identifying the senses and how they are transmitted was powerful, and I wanted to channel some of that into my process.

My lead dancer Jonathan Hsu (a Chinese-American dance and kinesiology major and a senior at the University of Maryland) came into the process, as all would come, “to learn the moves.” It took a large portion of our time together in rehearsal for him to get into the particular flow of the movements I was seeking, and it was a flow of continuity that I was looking for. Also, I was struggling with finding the exact flow myself. We practiced for a long time, so that we could master this flow. I asked him questions such as:

Have you ever slept and felt like you were suffocating?

“No” He would answer with wide-open eyes.

I told him a story about one of my most memorable experiences:

My minds’ eyes:

One night I woke up from sleep. I was exhausted. I did not know why I felt particularly tired. However, I was awake and was ready to go. I got up from my queen-size bed, looked out through the window into the beautiful, serene darkness. I saw no one, “weird,” I thought for a second. I extended my neck into the soft blowing light breeze of the night. It was a beautiful feeling. A feeling I have never experienced in my life. I did not feel the need to use the door. I was free, free to do anything I wanted, free to jump and I was not afraid of injuring myself from the fall. I jumped. At that moment, I was flying. I was in the air, and I wasn’t looking back. I started running. I was moving at superhuman speed. I knew that I was free. There was no one. I felt lonely, but that feeling lasted for very brief seconds. I was back to feeling relieved and airy. Oh my, I had traveled too far, where am I? In the midst of nowhere, it was nowhere. For the first time, I felt what the phrase “in the middle of nowhere” means. I was lost. Lost in my world. I needed to be found. I started the quest of tracing my way back. Back to where? I instantly remembered that I had left my body. “That is not normal.” That world was my mind. I was dead. Oh no, when I did I die. Fear overtook me. Now I was in an erratic mood. Crying, running, screaming and looking for my way back. Now am back, I need to get back into my body. Okay, am in. Phew! Why am I not moving? Yes, I am dead. HELP HELP HELP! I woke up (Emoghene, Personal Journal 2015).

Girard and Cheyne capture this feeling of out-of-body experience in a succinct way:

Feeding on my lived experience of pain during sleep paralysis, I related to what Ronald Melzack referred to as “theory of neuromatrix.”¹⁵ – Blanke, et al, further states:

In conclusion this creative literature review highlights research that I have made in the areas of psychology, biomedical science, philosophicy, and in dance practice and dance studies. Until further studies concerning the phenomenon of sleep paralysis are carried out to prove otherwise, my opinion of it will continue to be “an experience.” I have come to the conclusion that it is in my best interest that I view this phenomenon as normal, and a part of the human experience.

In Chapter One, in my journal entry, I originally called the piece the sleeping mind. I found that the sleeping and immobility of the human body in recreating the journey and scenarios encountered was essential.

The first material I worked with creatively was the idea of the human body. Initially, I had to decide if this was a male or a female body. I struggled with the decision because I wanted to make the story universal, but in the end, I almost subconsciously chose a male performer who looked like me.

I evolved three main characters and a chorus of masked figures:

The Body; The Voice; The Mind; and

It was especially important to me to have these three elements embodied by actual human performers. Although my initial thinking was to make one individual play or reenact the three characters. I soon realized that making one individual play all three characters was not possible. The parts were too large a stretch of emotions to handle by a single character.

I viewed the Body as the representation of the entire human form. The body is the vessel that carries the thought faculty, brain, skin, voice and matter¹⁶ that occupies the space. The body’s positioning defined the nature of sleep. Sleep is a time of rest, when the human form takes on various sleep positions in order to acquire such rest, and thus the sleeping body became the foundation for defining this particular role. I decided that the sleep body would remain asleep for the entirety of the piece. Although I decided that the body was going to stay in a stationary position for most of the time, the Body is illuminated all throughout the work, thus laying visual emphasis on it. The soft lighting on the sleeping body highlighted the supine position of the body. The Body being in supine position is a deliberate choice because from my research, most people believe that sleep paralysis occurs more frequently while in that position.

I viewed the Mind as the resultant effect of the human brain. The brain is the physical tissue, and the mind is that which creates the electromagnetic functionalities of the brain that generates thought. The mind houses the next element I refer to as the Voice. I stumbled onto the idea of the Mind as an entity that roams, using the effect of audiovisual-hallucination and images of floating, running, walking, falling, feeling of different sensations. I visualized the Mind as a human moving in a surreal environment. The Mind is the most active part of an important trio that appears in the work. The Mind moves and stays still; the mind expresses more heightened emotions than any of the other parts. While I was thinking and visualizing the role of the mind, it was hard not to think that the mind is a supernatural being and an aspect of itself. The Mind was, for me, in my visualization, bigger than life. I went back to my experiences and felt like the Mind had the power to do and undo. I would say that the Mind is the most integral part of all the experiences.

I started thinking that this role needed a dancer who was very active and very connected to his or her emotions. To reach these emotions would take a lot of processes.

I noticed that people (human beings) have conversations with themselves. These conversations have become a necessary part of our existence. The idea that we talk and have conversations with ourselves that reach a decision is the foundation of the creation of the Voice. These internal conversations are sometimes never thought about or are completely forgotten. Such conversations became the idea for creating a scripted narrative that played in pari passu to the activity of the moving mind. I thought about making the Voice a recorded narration that plays along with the performance. But I then thought about the fact that this voice isn’t just any sound or environmental noise, but an intricate vessel to the whole. The voice is an aspect of the whole that is present, and the entire being cannot do without its constant or intermittent presence. I felt that an actual person would most effectively perform the Voice.

In the reality of dreaming and dreams, the engagement with other beings is apparent. The constant communication with other humans in the dream world is a huge part of my dream life, and I needed to include this aspect in the experience. I wanted to portray the encounters with these humans in my dreams as vivid and true to the experience as much as possible. In my dreams, I sense the presence of such beings. I was particularly concerned about how they form the emotional aspect of the whole experience, rather than physically identifying them as characters hence, my decision to mask the faces and cloak them. Tyler Gunther, the costume designer, did some research on how best to create these surreal creatures, and he came up with the idea of blending the colors of the costume materials with the set and the floor in a masked cloak.

As I created the environment, I thought about the sounds I usually hear during an episode of sleep paralysis; I noticed that during such episodes, the distinct sounds were a vital aspect of the whole experience. When there is no sound, fear builds. When there is a sound of some sort, imaginary scenes are constructed. This surreal world therefore becomes one that is enhanced by any sound. For example, the slow hissing of the owl gives me a rather soothing and/or scary scenario. Sounds, for me, define the emotional tone of a dream event. For example, the sound of trucks moving leaves me with a sense of being close to a road.

I began to think about sound as the foundation for disseminating emotional feelings through performing soundscapes that are familiar or not to the audiences, making them feel something, but not trying to make them feel a particular emotion. The idea to make a sound-based environment became a vital tool for my creative process. I thought about sounds like moaning, screaming, crying, shuffling, singing, whistling, etc. Although most of the time such sounds wound up not being used during the actual performance, the movement sustained the emotional context of such sounds.

I was in flux as to what movement vocabulary to use. I am an African contemporary dancer, and that movement vocabulary comes easily to me. One boggling question was: why I am not finding appropriate and meaningful movement from the vocabularies I already knew? I asked Adriane Fang, my modern dance professor and a member of my thesis committee, and she encouraged me to try and “find” my material. The traditional, modern, and social dance movements I was familiar with and trying to incorporate had already been made and used. Hence, they already existed and thus were inappropriate for my current process. I found that the answer was compelling, and I went on about inventing my material.

A movement is like a language; one has to find the appropriate speech to convey any particular message. I had to make a choice to use a more unscripted vocabulary or not to make use of any dance style in particular but the one that made sense for the moment. Discovering my original material was easier than I thought it would be. It was all about me moving to the ideas at hand and using them to develop my primary voice.

As I went into the studio, after having failed from using known movement vocabularies for my creation, I found a beginning. I went into the studio, alone, in a beautifully constructed studio we call the Choreography Studio in the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center at the University of Maryland. This studio always inspired me. The cause of the inspiration is still unknown to me. I felt it was probably the color or the beautiful glass squares at the top of the building that allow in sunlight. I sat in the middle of space in silence, looking into the mirror. I saw nothing but myself sitting on the gray Marley dance floor, staring into space. I was visualizing the feeling of an out-of-body experience, playing with the thought of floating and walking while not seeing the ground, but most of all, engaging with how memory floats away zooming into infinity. I stood up, closed my eyes, and started floating.

The next rehearsal, which was days later, Jonathan walked in, and I went to him right away, talking about the ideas I had come up with during his absence and we started dancing. Using some fundamentals from Contact Improvisation, I ended up holding both of his ankles from behind. I told him to stay still as I tried to pull him so that he would glide along the floor. He stopped me and asked if I was attempting to draw him; I replied, yes, and he said, “we might need socks for that.” He went quickly to get his socks from the little hallway demarcating the studio from the main hall. He put on his socks, and as I pulled him, we found it, our first floating movement. This exploration was the opening-of-the-door-moment, and I knew that I was onto something at this point. Leaving the studio, I felt fulfilled and thrilled.

Although I went in search for original movements, I kept the foundation of my dance training in this creation. My training, which includes African dance and contemporary dance, were the base for these explorations.

Traditional African movements are used to portray the ritualistic nature of exorcism found in my traditional culture. Using the cyclical runs of the Ekpo and Abang masquerades of Cross Rivers state in Nigeria I wanted to create a feeling that would, with the cloaks, generate twirling wind motions for the audience. In the running segments, the masked dancers continually engaged their torso and undulated as they ran, embodying the watery, wavy nature of the Ekombi/Abang dances. The choice of using the dance styles like B-boying and movements found in yoga and other such practices were deliberate, and they played to the strength of the performers to create meaning as they performed.

In conclusion, the dancers needed to find ways to relate to the tasks so they could communicate their understanding of the movement in their movement voices through improvisation. Improvisation mixed with expressive intentions was a large part of my process, and at the end, I believe that my dancers found a means to use the constructed movements for their own interpretations.

In this section, I will give a general overview of the space and how it inspired my vision. Also, I will include notes from my collaborators.

The Dance Theater at the Clarice Smith Performing Art Center.

I first saw this space in the fall of 2013, when I arrived from Nigeria. I was captivated by the industrial look of the venue. This venue is multipurpose, used for dance technique classes and dance performances. I was very curious about the space, particularly in the way it had so many nooks and crannies and hidden outlets. I knew I had an affinity for weird and fascinating spaces, and this was a good example of one. From the onset, I knew the concept of “Nyam chiem” was mainly about aspects of sleep episode and therefore, a bedroom needed to be part of the set. Diana Chun, my set designer, and I had a conversation about sleep paralysis. My first thought in our conversation was about how the feeling of my room changes and how it becomes a larger than life visual representation. An example of this would be a small picture frame becoming larger than life, and all figures in the picture come to life. We began by using the physical settings of a bedroom, my bedroom, as our sketchpad. In my room, I had a queen size bed, a lamp stand and a lamp, one picture frame and picture, and the sharp angles of the four corners of the bedroom. From this description, we derived the hammock which represented the queen size bed, the 8 by 5 feet painting represented the picture and frame, the columns represented the sharp edges of the corner of the room, and then the dripping water, represented my lonely nights of tears.

In order to capture the works of the designers, I asked them to provide their research materials and short process write-ups, and reflection of the entire process for this paper. This includes how they actualized the design of the piece. I wanted this to be as organic as possible and to be able to show their collaborations with me throughout the process.

I find collaboration to be more of a one-hand-washes-the-other kind of process. In my opinion, without the full commitment of the collaborator, and without the full trusting of the collaborating party, to go headlong into the creative design process, it won’t be a successful collaboration, but rather a dictatorship on my part as the artistic director.

Below are the collaborators’ process notes and images, and how they articulated their works through artistic and theoretic ventures, in achieving the work. 1. Set design by Diana Chun

Fig 1 – 9 below visually captures the entire set design process from conceptualization to actualization: See below for images http://dianachundesigns.com.

Fig. 1 – 9 below visually captures the entire costume design process from conceptualization to actualization. See below for images:

www.tylergunther.com.

4 Light design by Connor Dreibelbis Lighting research materials:

5 Projection design by Ian McClain and Sinclair Emoghene My curiosity about the surreal and what it would look like if a world were created using projection design, started this creative process. I was curious as to what it would be if we made use of new media design, projection mapping, haze, water and other types of surface.

The world of the surreal and how to achieve it was key, and given the fact that my skill in new media design and the technical components involved was limited, I sought out the assistance of Jared Mezzocchi, a Professor in the School of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies. I first took a projection design class, and then two different independent studies with him. He recommended the expertise of undergraduate projection design student, Ian McClain, to assist me. Before Ian joined me, I designed a snippet of the idea for the presentation of the thesis proposal, using Isadora software and pre-recorded videos to create a projection mapping on the back of my head. The video contents were a collection from online downloaded web based materials. This videos projection preview was a clear pathway for Ian. As I did with other designers and their collaborative components and contributions, I allowed the freedom for Ian to take our discussions as the foundation for own creativity and artistry. I was pleasantly surprised that Ian came back with the ideas in very innovative ways, exploring the concept of using shadows, wall murals, and mapping of fire, fog and smoke. He also went into working with the choreography, the sound designer, and the light designer to come up with more interactive media.

Projection design research images:

In the end, I was pleased by the nature of the design elements. Not very often does one find oneself in a production where the design elements find life in themselves, and then come together as supporting elements that produce a whole. My overarching aim was to have a world where the performer was aided by the world in which he finds himself. There was nothing in the entire design elements that was thrown in without meaning. Like all the daily rehearsals with the dancers creating the movements, the designers were engaged throughout the process, creating until we hit the final product.

The performance opened with an audio narrative performance by my friend and collaborator, Nadav Heyman, who came from Los Angeles to perform the role of the Voice. I found Nadav in an online dance video “Helena” on Vimeo, where he was performing movements along with narration, similar to what I had in mind for “Nyam chiem.” So, I contacted him to write the script and portray the character of the Voice. In this section, I will feed off of the unique narrative technique that I employed throughout as I report. The performance section will be broken down into different segments, as broken down by the narration of One.¹⁷

The Body appears at center stage, doing an expressive dance that engages the torso, using minimal space area of movement and the lighting lit from the top of the dancer, to create eerie silhouettes as the Voice renders his first lines:

Space is engulfed by sound, as the faint light comes on the Body, who now sleeps in a hammock. The projection design builds on the set, and we see the departure of the Mind from the Body in a projected out-of-body experience, creating a vivid water wave sensation, welcoming the audience into the surreal world of the human mind.

In the next section, the Voice moves upstage, and he is against the backdrop of a visual painting that signifies the unusually large mural in the room of the sleeping body, an idea that fed off of the visual hallucination properties found in the experience of sleep paralysis.

Three masked meta-humans (dancers) appear on the left side of the stage, and the Mind is seen down stage right. The appearance of the Mind at this point is the first time we have a sense of him, and we see him going through an emotional experience.

As the text begins, the Mind is in a rotational movement that ends up with him hovering on top of the three masked figures.

In this section, the Mind experiences static and unbearable immobility, thus, the offshoot of his emotions through a choreographed depiction of masked figures approaching in and out of the Mind’s thoughts from all angles possible. After this experience, the Mind is left alone feeling the emotions and trying to curtail and cope with this new and frightening environment of sleep paralysis. Emotions at this point are raw. Tears and crying are some of the activities the Mind underwent as he surged through such a perplexing world. I used the dripping of water from the constructed pipe on the frame of the cracked wall to signify the enormous amount of tears the Mind goes through. The decision to use such raw emotion is deliberate, and the emphasis is on the emotions and how the Mind finds his process of dealing with the situation.

(Traditional tribal sounds of exorcism and masquerading approaching in the distance. Ekpo Calabar and Akoto Badagry masquerade songs engulf the space.)

The Mind seeks freedom. The mind goes into a mode of reminiscence. Using African ritual songs, movements and dance to dealing with such uncontrollable circumstances. In the performance of the piece, at this point, masked figures run in circular motions in frenzied patterns of exorcism and ritualistic choreography. The Mind is in the middle of this and is taking in all the actions around him. In a frenzied way, the Mind is satisfied by the motions and emotions, and he drops into a fall, and he is much more alive.

The Mind engages with individual segments of his feelings, and he does this by doing a trio dance with the masked figures, a style I derived from the Tiv Swange and Kwaghir puppet theater of Nigeria. The trio dance led into a frenzied solo performance signifying an acceptance of the answers gotten from the preceding ritual scene. This solo dance leads the mind to a nostalgic remembrance of a friend and a childhood game time. This part is a definite dream sequence, and it’s performed in a duet of the Mind and one masked figure. The dance style used to portray this is contemporary and modern American contemporary dance. This technique is employed to give the performers a range of comfort to express and reach far into their emotions and also add to the depth of the topic.

(While the duet went on, the voice continues his rendition of the “One” narration):

After the duet, the Mind is seen in visual murals on the set through projection design, a visual representation of the frightened senses of the Mind in sleep paralysis. I use this to represent his state of hallucination. The Mind begins to move his arms and flick his wrists, to indicate resistance, acceptance, fight, struggle, and awareness. The Body moves; this is the only time in the entire piece that the body physically moves, and we see a reaction from him as the Mind goes into a duet with the Voice.

The Mind goes into a state of acceptance and repose as he meanders his way through the little-nuanced movements of the masked figures.

The end of the piece uses innovative movements like gliding and pulling a dancer along the floor, signifying a floating motion that makes the dancers into oblivion. The Mind is being tossed left and right by masked figures, a play of yes and no. In the end, the Mind accepts the situation and calls sleep paralysis a normalcy and a part of his incredible existence here on earth.

“Nyam chiem” has quickly morphed into a major subject of my artistic process. I have started developing smaller projects, some of which are currently being executed, and some of which I plan for years in the future. Part of the smaller projects in the immediate includes: “Rooted on a Moving Spot” to premier on April 11th 2016, location – it was in an interesting place I recall – metal shop, a collaborative project with visual artist Beki Basch from the Art Department at University of Maryland, College Park and also a Baltimore artist. “Rooted on a Moving Spot” stems from the confined space idea and surreality of “Nyam chiem.” The longer-term works, on the other hand, includes a film series I plan on creating about sleep paralysis in dance, the restaging of “Nyam chiem” itself, and other works about sexuality, gender, and religious beliefs.

“Nyam chiem” is a merger between two worlds and two different perspectives on the modern choreographic processes, including my African trado-modern¹⁸ experiences and beliefs, as well as my Western training and influences.

In Nigeria, dance making is partly a re-creation of already existing movement dialogues and movement patterns, as well as the use of current issues in the celebration and reenacting of any current activity. Dance making is devised and community-based and naturally choreographed into the lifestyle of the people.

In my quest for understanding my present challenge as an African dance choreographer, I find that I’m at the introductory phase of something new. This project was my biggest opportunity to begin exploring this new phase. I threw out all my previous inclinations and sorted out ways to first adapt to my new environment and then through that, to find my artistic voice. Writing this work and observing my journey and process continually fascinated me. I think about how I found ways to create the work, still retaining my sense of home and finding a stronger way to articulate my process in the most succinct and clear ways possible.

Reading most of the research materials I found for this work, and taking classes every day for the past two and a half years, did open my eyes to a lot of information. The information garnered was juxtaposed with my already overflowing pool of knowledge of my home and practices of my people. I feel that the experience so far has been productive and fulfilling.

My research into sleep paralysis was theoretical, experiential and self-reflexive, and theatrical at every step. I became aware of my body, my history, my environment, my experiences, and the dreams I have for my future. “Nyam chiem” was both a life lesson learned and an experience lived.

With this work on sleep paralysis, which I find to be an innovative area in modern day dance practices, research and choreography, I tried to reconcile the marriage of practice as research and that of performance as a daily practice. The scholarly research concerning sleep paralysis, which I found in psychology texts, helped this research as a supporting base, and as a lens through which the phenomenon can be viewed using movement as the canon for the main exploration, discussion, execution, and presentation.

Collaborations are sometimes challenging between the choreographic artist and other collaborative artists; through this process, I found that to be a valuable process to go through as a dance maker. The activities of creating choreographed and improvised movements into a performance, the mapping of projected visual effects and the use of high-tech stagecraft were new ways of knowing. This exposure gave me an understanding of cultural, social, collaborative, choreographic tools, movement language/vocabulary, technological skills, theoretical analysis skills, management, budgeting, communication, textual, and contextual applications of learned materials for experiencing, and living the life of a modern day dance artist.

In conclusion, “Nyam chiem” (Night-Mare) depicts the human mind as the metaphysical interface between surreal and the physical, identifying sleep paralysis an ongoing and unending phenomenon. The fact that various people are experiencing sleep paralysis keeps the concept alive.