MIMPI World Premiere to Open at Arts House

Arts House will present the world premiere of Mimpi, a hypnotic work of song, sound and ritual dance from experimental music trio Lung Swara and Javanese dancer Rianto. Performances will run 2 – 6 December 2026.

In Rianto and Cahwati Sugiarto's home village in Central Java, dancers in a trance performance are taken over by spirits and pulled into a deeper trance state with the crack of a whip. The four artists behind Mimpi travelled there to witness it and that ritual is now one of the inspirations for the work.

“Seeing the trance performance in the village changed how we thought about the work. It became a reference point for the four of us, showing us how transformative performance can be and the incredible power of these ritual practices,” said percussionist Matthias Schack-Arnott.

Mimpi means 'dream' in Indonesian. Rianto and Matthias, together with Javanese singer and dancer Cahwati and clarinettist Aviva Endean, made the work by sharing their dreams with each other and following the fear and desire running underneath them.

What comes out of those dreams isn't a story. Audiences step into a world where creatures of the mind take slippery forms and move with the performers in and out of dream states.

“We each brought our dreams into the room, the old ones and the new ones. Mimpi isn't one person's dream – it's what happens when four dreams start to speak to each other,” said Rianto.

The music in Mimpi works with three elemental forces: percussion, voice and wind. Incense, haze, Alex Nguyen's lighting and Romanie Harper's otherworldly design complete the dreamscape.

Matthias combines percussion with found objects. Cahwati's voice moves from a snarl to a hush, drawing on Javanese and Balinese song. Aviva pulls her clarinet apart and layers air sounds through lectronics, from a single breathy tone to a blizzard of harmonics.

Cahwati, Aviva and Matthias formed Lung Swara after four days in a studio in Tegal, Central Java, in May 2024. Their 2025 Melbourne Fringe concert season sold out and won Best Music. The trio were also 2026 Art Music Awards finalists.

An Arts House CultureLAB residency turned the concert into a staged work and Rianto joined to bring a second dance voice. He and Cahwati have worked together since 2016, touring Medium and Hijrah internationally. Rianto returns to Arts House after co-creating Jagad in 2022.

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