‘Dream Machine’ brings beat-driven magic back to Calgary’s High Performance Rodeo

Dream Machine is less a play and more an experience. The trans-disciplinary production, created by artists from One Yellow Rabbit, returns this January to help kick off the 40th annual High Performance Rodeo.

“It’s not a passive, nice little play,” says Denise Clarke, associate artist at One Yellow Rabbit, who choreographed the show and performs in it.

Structured as a song cycle, Dream Machine blends live music, movement, and spoken text, creating a performance that prioritizes atmosphere and rhythm over traditional narrative.

The production draws on the Beat Generation of the 1950s, a highly literary counterculture that shaped much of what followed in art, music, and social movements. Writers such as Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, and Jack Kerouac form part of the show’s reference point.

Clarke notes that Kerouac’s On the Road inspired generations of people to travel, explore, and reject conventional life paths — a countercultural impulse that still shows up today in ideas like van life and nomadic living.

She adds that the Beat writers differed from later movements in both tone and approach. They were deeply educated, well-versed in literature and history, and used dense, muscular language rather than something lighter or decorative. Clarke says that mix of intellect and freedom of expression made their work especially influential — not just on the hippie movement, but on punk, DIY culture, and later artistic scenes that valued strong individual voices.

Within the show, the Dream Machine itself reflects the post–Second World War social and economic system the Beats were pushing back against.

Clarke describes the original Beat writers as radical human beings who wanted freedom of expression and wanted to live authentic lives, resisting what she calls the military-industrial and consumerist mindset that emerged through advertising, capitalism, and mass consumption — forces that continue to shape daily life.

Dream Machine has a long history with One Yellow Rabbit. First produced in 2003, the show went on to tour internationally. Revisiting it now, Clarke says the company was struck by how current the material still feels.

She recalls that the work was originally shaped in response to global politics at the time, including the Gulf War and the language of “shock and awe.” Looking at the material again years later, Clarke says the poems and songs continue to resonate, combining original writing by Blake Brooker with selected Beat-era texts.

“There’s a lot of original writing,” she says, adding that the show also weaves in poetry from the Beat writers. “In no way will you go old fashioned.”

Clarke points to the strength of the live music as a central part of the experience.

“The music isn’t just nice music — it’s gorgeous music,” she says. Performers include Allison Lynch and Kris Demeanor, with Jonathan Lewis on violin, Augustine Yates on piano, and Peter Moller on percussion. Clarke describes the ensemble as “phenomenally gifted,” with live performance driving much of the show’s energy.

The full ensemble includes singers, instrumentalists, and movement-based performers, with live violin, piano, and percussion driving the show.

Dream Machine runs Jan. 14–24 at the Big Secret Theatre. The show is 90 minutes long.