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Dali Dome Day has arrived – so what’s it like?

Bill DeYoung

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"Dali Alive 360" is a fully immersive 40-minute exploration of the work, and the mind, of Salvador Dali. All photos by Bill DeYoung.

It’s kind of like It’s a Small World meets the bizarre and slightly unsettling “Pink Elephants on Parade” sequence from Dumbo.

It’s a wild ride.

Otherwise, there’s nothing particularly Disneyfied about “Dali Alive 360,” the 40-minute program that sets visitors down directly within the works – and the very mind – of eccentric surrealist painter Salvador Dali.

 

After a three-week delay due to an electrical issue, the pre-recorded, fully immersive experience set to music opens Thursday, in the massive geodesic dome behind the Dali Museum. Members of the media got a preview of the 360-degree biography-slash-travelogue, which utilizes 11 separate projectors mounted in the ceiling, Wednesday morning.

The dome is 45 feet high and 60 feet across. And Salvador Dali is everywhere – paintings, drawings, sculpture, photographs, quotations and more. “Dali Alive 360” never stops moving.

It’s right around the 25-minute mark that things begin to get weird, with a series of (billboard-sized) animations of some of Dali’s best-known, and most surreal works. Like dreams (or nightmares) they move.

Giant red ants hurry by on the floor, followed by a series of World War II bombers. Eyes blink and hands wave. Candelabras, pianos, people and melting clocks soar overhead and across the domed ceiling.

“This is the only permanent dome focused on art, that I’m aware of, in the country,” the museum’s executive director Hank Hine said after the preview.

Choosing which works to animate, Hine explained, involved intimate knowledge of the artist’s catalog. “And we really wanted to tell a story that may not be evident when you look at a collection of works in the gallery.”

For information on “Dali Alive 360,” click here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

1 Comment

1 Comment

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    Diana Re

    December 10, 2023at7:40 pm

    Spectacular, but I’ll like to know the soundtrack used please.

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