"In C, Too" illuminates how close our dreams are to a common reality. Through structured visual improvisational techniques, the work explores how humanity survives because of our imagination and desire to transcend. "In C, Too" is also an origin story, operating in renunciation to mortality, focused on life’s essentials – existence, exploration and how entropy ignites evolution.

Beginning with landscapes of perception, a quartet of dancers metamorphose, fluidly flowing from surface, to density, to a higher state of being; surrounded by synapses firing, and concentric shapes, suggesting the unceasing nature of forces greater us. Viewers are left with the impression that chaos and order coexist, they are not opposites but two views of the energy of the universe.

"In C, Too" is the sequel to "ACT III," which Winkler and Sanborn created with the music of Philip Glass in 1983. In that seminal piece the artists reimagined the world as composed of contours, symbols and analog video-inspired transformations to visualize Glass’ score. Defiantly abstract, yet filled with human touches and multiple artistic references, the work functioned as a cry of liberation and operated as an original work of media art (named one of the 100 Masterworks of Media Art by Dr. Peter Weibel and the ZKM), and a music/video for the avant-garde. And, yes, it played on MTV.

Separated by 40 years, both pieces use the language of virtuosic video-making to celebrate the power and freedom of transformation, leaning into apophenia, the human tendency to seek patterns for sense-making.

Elena Ruehr wrote "In C, Too" in honor of the 80th birthday of the legendary composer Terry Riley. She describes the work as “a playful romp that explores the pitch C in various tonal guises, and some ragtime.”

Created by Dean Winkler and John Sanborn
Music composed by Elena Ruehr
Performed by Sarah Cahill
From the album "Eighty Trips Around the Sun"