Walking at Night by Myself
Walking at Night by Myself is an experiential performance using 8-channel surround sound, projection, and two Asian female performers.
Two nameless women in matching striped dresses walk into the night as one. The steady rhythm of their footsteps gives way to the unnerving metronome of sine tones encircling the listener. White vertical lines scan across their striped dresses, revealing hidden colours and an eerie oil sheen. Sound and light continue to pull at the edges, leaving ghostly afterimages and confounding patterns. What begins as a simple nighttime walk threatens to dissolve into something far more sinister…
Walking at Night by Myself is an unabashedly hypnotic and spooky audiovisual show—a study in form and rhythm evoking confusion and the uncanny. It’s a psychological horror where the plot unfolds through visual interference patterns occurring between the costumes and projection, in tandem with live-performed surround sound design and choreography, creating a performance that transcends from the spectacular to the phenomenological: from seeing to experiencing. This experiential work questions the surety of our senses, opens us up to the changing environs around us, and lulls us deeper into our own internal worlds.
CREDITS
Lead Artist, Director, Sound Design Performer: Nancy Tam
Projection Design Performer: Daniel O’Shea
Performers: Anjela Magpantay and Jasmine Chen
Costume Designer: Nellie Gossen
Co-creator + Choreographic Consultant: Lexi Vajda
Rehearsal Director: Giselle Liu
Consulting dramaturg: Conor Wylie
Technical Director: Ira Jordison
Associate Producer: Charlie Cooper
Walking at Night by Myself’s short version premiered at Music on Main’s event Emerge on Main on April 24th, 2018 at the Fox Cabaret in Vancouver. It was showcased at PushOFF 2019, and Music on Main’s Modulus festival, and toured to Sound Forms Festival in Hong Kong.
2020 tour stops at M-A-I in Montreal and the Bendigo International Festival of Exploratory Sound were cancelled due to COVID-19.
The full-length version premiered in Vancouver on Oct 29, 2021 as a part of Indiefest, and toured to the Open Ears Festival of Music and Sound in Kitchener-Waterloo.
Presented as one half of SEEING DOUBLE @ 2025 PuSh International Performing Arts Festival, alongside K BODY AND MIND on JAN 31 – FEB 2 @ The Dance Centre.