come dream your most glorious dreams into existence in mutual support with a gorgeous crip community of friends and soon-to-be friends <3
created + led by alexa dexa
presented by RestFest
dreaming our futures + embodying our dreams is a year-long crip ritual opera made by, with, and for disabled folks dreaming together from bed. rooted in disability justice, dreaming our futures centers processes of community co-creation, responsive accessibility, and radical inclusion in a live participatory remote setting that prioritizes our collective safety through ongoing pandemic.
channeling interdependence and community care, dreaming our futures encompasses the transformation that takes place in our lives throughout one year as we dream our most glorious dreams into existence. blurring the distinctions between opera, our dreams, and our lived realities, the year-long nature of the performance recontextualizes our daily lives as sites of magic/opera, a ritual we continuously perform, dreams we perpetually manifest.
together, we’re dreaming futures with us in them in direct resistance to ableist systems of oppression and eugenics that celebrate our disabled deaths.
join us comfy + cozy from bed online over zoom on the first saturday of every month from 3pm to 5pm eastern time from november of 2025 through october of 2026.
2025:
november 1
december 6
2026:
january 3
february 7
march 7
april 4
may 2
june 6
july 4
august 1
september 5
october 3
october 31
accessibility artistry for dreaming our futures + embodying our dreams includes:
✿ american sign language and song-signing
✿ cart captioning and open creative captioning
✿ audio description, sharing the visual landscape via oration
✿ open sound description, sharing the mood, instrumentation, and melodic / rhythmic content of our opera via written text
✿ accessibility artists, caring for access needs, answering questions, and providing support for us all
✿ a 1 hour pre-ritual accessibility drop-in period, welcoming you to arrive early, ask questions, and join us in preparing for our time dreaming together
✿ a 1 hour post-ritual processing period, welcoming you to continue sharing space with us, share about your dreams and plans, and receive affirmation, validation, and care
✿ a recording and transcript of our time together, shared with all who rsvp as a form of asynchronous access honoring crip time
✿ an open invitation to participate in “real time” +/or crip time as is possible for you throughout our year together; perfect attendance is ableist. flux is part of the process.
if you have any questions, access requests, +/or prefer to rsvp over email, contact alexa dexa at [email protected]
on dreaming our futures, alexa dexa says “i love the possibility for meaningfully being able to experience the trajectories of people’s dreams over time and for folks to be able to find each other and share supports along the way. and i think space to dream is so important to building the communities of care we want to nurture and be nurtured by. very anti-productivity, anti-capitalism, anti-eugenics, anti-nihilism and pro-showing-up-for-your-neighbors-and-digital-friends because that’s a real life-affirming thing we can do. and who knows how it ripples out?”
to support us in our gorgeous sweet dreamings, i’ve dreamed into existence and crafted with care a pair of ritual tools sharing soft guidance for dreaming our futures + embodying our dreams: an oracle//composition deck and a crip ritual dream workbook.
dreaming our futures + embodying our dreams oracle//composition deck
depicted through small spell poems and closed-eye crayon drawings turned glitch art, dreaming our futures + embodying our dreams oracle//composition deck is a collection of 55 dream maps sharing my dreams for myself through chronic illness and madness and offering pathways to embodying these dreams, both a coping mechanism for feeling lost in my bodymind and for a future where i will surely feel lost in my bodymind again. a way to find and anchor myself through chaos.
each dream map serves both as a divinatory oracle, a tool for being deeply with ourselves and our magic, and as an indeterminate graphic score, the sounding out of which (with any mechanism for generating sound and a connection to experimentation and play) becomes its own dream portal and songspell for fruition.
in addition, each deck also includes a dream spell altar card, 5 cards with blank faces offering space for drawing your own dream maps and adding them to the deck for your own personal divining purposes, and a guide card suggesting methods for reading dream maps as graphic scores, a practice available to anyone and everyone – no prior musical experience needed.
what better way to divine our pastpresentfutures than by dreaming our wildest, most fantastical, glorious, and boundless dream pastpresentfutures into existence for ourselves?
dreaming our futures + embodying our dreams: a crip ritual dream workbook
dreaming our futures + embodying our dreams: a crip ritual dream workbook is alexa dexa’s 66-page, hand-written accompanying dream workbook for their dreaming our futures + embodying our dreams crip ritual album and oracle//composition deck. risograph-printed by Endless Editions, the crip ritual dream workbook shares alexa’s thoughts on the importance of dreaming, tips for accessing the dream portal and receiving the wisdom within, a spell for dreaming our most glorious dreams, ample space for recording your dreaming and the meanings and messages that meet you, and suggestions for gently guiding yourself towards embodying your dreams and for being your own compass and cartographer.
may we dream big, dream frivolously, dream idly, dream idyllically, dream steadily with the weight of our lives, and may we always know our dreams as possible realities.
book a one-on-one dream ritual with alexa dexa.
dreaming our futures + embodying our dreams: a dream ritual
meet alexa dexa one-on-one in the dream realm for a personalized, online dream ritual. immerse yourself in pure cosmic potential as alexa guides you gently towards dreaming your future and embodying your dreams. come knowing the themes you’d like to dream on, or gain insight with a dream reading using alexa’s dreaming our futures + embodying our dreams oracle//composition deck. be lulled into lush and vibrant dream space with a songspell for sweet dreams and safety that will morph and evolve to support the duration of your dreaming. as you’re eased back into the present, pull your dreams from the ether with you and together, we’ll make a mapping of the waking possibilities of your dreams and your power to embody them.
$75 – $95 ● 60 min
$105 – $125 ● 90 min
dream reading
so i’m definitely a ✨dreams hold all our pastpresentfutures and all our fantasy inbetweens and access to our ancestors and other realms and to our waking friends whom we meet in dreams for relaying informations and for many kinds of communications and unearthings and learnings ✨ kind of a dreamer. in a dream reading with me, we’ll delve deeply into the meanings and messages surfaced by your dreams and share practices for deepening your dreamwork. bring recollections of your recent dreams for further investigation and interpretation and/or gain insight into your dreams for yourself with an oracle reading using my dreaming our futures + embodying our dreams oracle//composition deck. by the end of our time together, you’ll have a more expansive understanding of your journeys through the dream realm and super dreamy guidance for dreaming your most glorious dreams into existence.
$55 – $75 ● 30 min
$75 – $95 ● 60 min
on the importance of dreaming.
it’s really not often, if ever (especially from within and under the rule of ableist capitalist profit-worshipping labor death cults), that we’re given global cultural permission to dream, to tap into our best possibilities, our connection with the vast potential of the universe, and the unknown as a source of benevolence waiting to shape us and be shaped. without easily recognizable power, influence, or economic interest, what appears as “idle” dreaming has no place in dominant and oppressive world views. it’s too impractical. but idyllic dreaming is a form of joy, a form of survival, a form of self and communal care, a way to reimagine our pastpresentfuture in order to build the interdependent communities of care we want to grow with, sustain, nurture, and be nurtured by. our dreaming is so valuable for our collective and personal liberation and safety.
“We all need this.”
“This is such a beautiful and valuable space that you and your team are holding. I feel really grounded and energised by the prospect of sharing this space and being in community with you all, whether that be in real or crip time.”
“I wanted to say thank you! i love tarot and also felt moved by you saying that flares are a spiritual experience… <3”
“I like how you conjure the vibe.”
“Thank you so much for the opera gathering, really appreciated the soft space to land ✨”
“Thank you so much for the ritual today – it was really beautiful, peaceful and inspiring to be there with everyone, and listen to your fairy-like music leading us into the dream realm.”
“Ty this ritual meant so much to me”
“There were passages there that hit me like holiness. Got chills.”
“I am living for your offering 😭😭😭 it was such a beautiful cosy corner of the internet and such a wholesome energy, thank YOUUU. I am honoured to participate and fckn BLESSED to experience such magic”
“you could feel how much care went into the event”
“So nourishing and beautiful 💚”
“the sounds of not being alone”
“this was the first time i shared a sound, feeling really emotional because i was able to sing/hum with other people for the first time since i became severely ill.”
“I loved how creative and supportive the environment was. We need more of that in the world.”
“so powerful. what a magical experience”
“i felt some healing happen during the ritual, deeper relaxation than i’ve felt for a long time. i feel like i belong in the world. so happy i was here with you all.”
“I felt so connected with y’all, thank you for helping me feel in community…so grateful I got to produce magic with y’all! <3”
“this felt very good and warm”
“omg, this was very healing <3”
“I loved the aesthetics and dreamy vibe. The interactive aspect was cool but also I could be a fly on the wall. I heard the audience reflecting about how they loved the slowed pace and intentional accessibility. Congrats on this great project. I have been recommending it to folks.”
“love the energy u are sending out and im looking forward to making more art together !”
“I am extremely excited about your opera dream I love your work so much in every way the ideas the aesthetic the vibes the sound the magic !”
“it was so so nice and such a beautiful space!! The music was so beautiful!! It truly was such an amazing event with so much accessibility stuff which I think was so so cool! Congrats on putting on such an amazing thing and I’m so excited for more to come!!”
“I’m looking forward to continuing to participate and adding my energy to something so beautiful and transformative”
“This was so awesome… I felt nervous about how to best participate in the beginning but felt braver as it went on. I loved this so much. I cried a bit!”
“I love the sound, ethos and spirit of your online gathering.”
“the graphics are so beautiful and make this feel so special”
“The piece felt to me to be ancient and modern at the same time.”
“i danced for years, have seen lots of performance art, live music, etc. and my brain kept wanting to decide ‘which one’ this ‘is.’ i eventually realized it is none of them. and that is really exciting.”
“I just wanted to thank you for stewarding us through such a special collective ritual dreaming and spell-casting session together ❤️One thing that lingered with me was how my small gesture of making a food bank donation felt so different because it came out of a place of being together in slowness, in community, in crip abundance, out of a place of nourishing the self. It felt so qualitively different than how mutual aid and other activist efforts often feel like they come out of urgency and emergency — from revving up the nervous system instead of from a place of calm, connection, and abundance.”
“Thank you everyone for creating this wonderful cozy musical space, I can’t express how amazing I find it ❤️”
“this was gorgeous and uplifting and so expansive”
“i love taking part in the dream opera! not exaggerating when i say it’s changing my relationship to my disability and to music as well. alexa i’m so happy you had this idea”
“i haven’t been able to participate in group music making in a long time and this was so magical. thank you so much <3 i have missed being in choral / performance spaces and this was so transformative for me as a housebound sick person. so grateful to connect with everyone!”
“the magic of this project is so tangible and affirming.”
“the dream operas are so glorious!! Thank you for holding such a marvelous place for us 😌💗”
“it was such a generative and warm space, and i’m looking forward to seeing everyone at the next one soon!”
thank you.
dreaming our futures + embodying our dreams is made possible
with funding by:
The New England Foundation for the Arts’ National Theater Project, with lead funding from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and additional support from the Doris Duke Foundation
The New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature
New Music USA’s Creator Fund
The Puffin Foundation, Ltd.
Long Island Grants for the Arts through funds provided by the office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature, and administered by The Huntington Arts Council
