Bay Area dancers Megan Lowe and Johnny Huy Nguyen investigate the meaning of home in a new, site-specific performance work developed during the duo’s 16-week residency at The David Ireland House. HOME(in)STEAD, an hour-long dance experience for intimate audiences of just 10 per performance, moves from front door to salon, utilizing the entirety of late conceptual artist David Ireland’s unique historic house turned work of art to explore themes of home and the intersection of dance, sculpture, and performance. The piece features original music by cellist Peekaboo and lighting by Rico Duenas.

The residency marks a developing collaboration for Lowe and Nguyen, who are building a dance together in co-collaboration for the first time. The two artists share a deep interest in immersive, sculptural, site-specific work, bringing their own strengths to the partnership—Lowe as a specialist in contact improvisation, aerial, and site-specific dance, and Nguyen with a multifaceted movement practice that includes breaking and other street dance forms.

Lowe and Nguyen were inspired by The David Ireland House’s residency open call in early 2022 to investigate and heal the concept of home together. “In our lived experiences, both of us have had complicated relationships with home. In interacting with the physicality of The David Ireland House through place-based movement interactions and contact partnering, we hoped to unlock new possibilities within the architecture to inspire embodied reflections on home and how we can define it for ourselves as an expansive space for healing, freedom, and connection,” they wrote.