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Member Spotlight: Q&A with Sammy & Caroline Chien-MacCaull | Co-Artistic Directors, Chimerik 似不像

How would you describe Chimerik 似不像 in a sentence?

We are an experimental interdisciplinary arts/performance company that merges movement, sound, media arts technology, and spirituality.

What was the artistic path that led you to building the company?

We began as a collective exploring the intersections of different art forms in ways that could inspire, provoke, and challenge contemporary culture and mindset. Over time, we solidified into a company while intentionally keeping that fluidity.

Sammy was deeply researching the origins of dance, including the ancient Chinese language of oracle bone script for Dance 舞, which depicts a shaman in ritual. Caroline was navigating lived experiences of altered perception and searching for ways to metabolize that through the body. We were both working across dance, sound, and new media, and kept encountering the same limitation. The work we wanted to create did not fit cleanly into one discipline.

Chimerik 似不像 became a container for that in-between space. We were drawn to the possibility that performance could be both sacred and contemporary, and that technology could exist alongside ritual without diminishing its depth.

What inspires the work the company creates?

We are inspired by states that are often misunderstood. Madness. Spiritual transmission. Diasporic memory. Cultural disappearance. Resilience. We are interested in grounding these themes in realism and lived experience rather than abstraction for its own sake.

We use technology in an organic and meaningful way, less as spectacle and more as an extension of the body’s energy. When technology becomes responsive and alive, it opens perceptual doors and invites audiences into embodied experience rather than distancing them from it.

Our connection to Taiwan also shapes our work. Many meaningful ritual traditions are disappearing under rapid modernization. Dance has always carried encoded sacred knowledge. We feel a responsibility to research, decode, and re-encode these transmissions so they can continue to live through contemporary bodies and reach new generations.

How would you describe dance’s impact on your life?

Dance has been both a survival and spiritual practice.

For Caroline, movement became a way to stay in the body when the mind fractured. It offered a way to process information without being consumed by it.

For Sammy, dance has been a devotional research practice. Studying ritual and embodied transmission expanded his understanding of choreography beyond composition into something relational and spiritual.

Dance has also shaped our partnership. We come from different cultural backgrounds, and that difference continually challenges and expands us. The work emerges from that tension, trust, and care.

What three core values drive your engagement with dance?

Embodiment. The body carries intelligence beyond cognition. We trust somatic knowledge.

Intercultural exchange. We believe in cross-pollination. Spiritualist mediumship in dialogue with Taiwanese shamanism. Technology meeting ritual. Contemporary dance meeting communities who may not see themselves reflected in it.

Radical care. Our processes include mental health awareness, ethical engagement with technology, and sustainable collaboration. The work may enter intense territory, but the container remains grounded in tenderness.

Any upcoming projects or news you can share with us?

Our newest project, SI(x), will have its world premiere at the Vancouver International Dance Festival March 13–15, 2026 at the Russian Hall. SI(x) opens an intimate window into the volatility and sanctity of Madness, where divergent ways of sensing and being illuminate the porousness between inner and outer worlds.

What would you say are the most significant benefits for you in being a Dance Centre member?

The Dance Centre is more than studio space. It is a cultural community hub.

For us, it keeps us connected. You see what others are working on, attend showings and performances, run into colleagues in the hallway, and stay in conversation beyond your own projects. That kind of exchange matters.

Because we work with immersive media and technology, it can be easy to become isolated in research. Being part of The Dance Centre keeps us rooted in the broader dance community and reminds us that the work is ultimately about people, not just innovation.

We are especially grateful for the Artist Residency Program and the opportunity to research and develop our productions in the Faris Theatre. That support was crucial to several past projects that later toured to Europe and Asia.

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Photos: Carla Alcántara and Sanya Ghaderi