Devisors: Caiqi Yang and Yi (Huang-Shu-Yi)
“Dreams tell us many an unpleasant biological truth about ourselves,” said Sigmund Freud, the founder of dream study and definitive forefather to creative studies like this.
We will call the pair before us two ‘performers’ for want of a better word to describe these not-quite dancers displaying movement and dance to music, unaccompanied by dialogue or words. It’s sheer physical experimentation without relief; no named director, no clear storyline and often no clear line of vision for an audience crammed into a tight squeeze.
That’s not to say that it doesn’t have its moments. Visually, when you can see beyond the head in front of you, glimpses can be caught of swaying limbs catching flickers of lights cleverly distributed about the stage. Caiqi Yang and Yi (Huang-Shu-Yi) spiralling into or off one another appear like a flowing painting with their intricate make-up designs and very tangible chemistry. But too much is lost on the audience completely. It is certainly high art and yet, too much is swept up into this incredibly vague, if incredibly beautiful, cloud of dreams way up in the heavens.
The contemporary performance group the pair formed finds its name from a flat they shared in London at 99B. And though their ambition is commendable, the final product still needs work. Combining live performance, moving image and physical theatre is tricky enough, but without words – hooking a story to continuous movement – poses an incredible challenge. Lighting (Jasmine Hoi Ching Tom) and music (Raymond Shing Yau Yang) have a magic of their own, and the set design, using props stitched together with metal wire, is no mean feat. The performance elements sizzle in the imagination, but the whole doesn’t slot together with ease.
Dreams are obscure, hazy things, and if anything, this performance suffers a similar fate to a person attempting to make meaning from something they dreamt before the morning after. The more one tries, the more it slips away from you. Freud tried to make a science of such dream study, and 99B have tried to make an art from it. But the devils in the detail and with better execution or with more time, this pair will get there.
Reviewed on 24 September 2026
