While the audience was still settling in at the cavernous Powerhouse, a former power plant in Brooklyn, a man in a blue suit walked down the aisle to the stage. He moves slowly, as if in a trance, and the music begins just as slowly—pulsing and low. The lights in the room were still on, but the auditorium soon fell silent. He stopped and looked back at us, then slipped through the curtains and disappeared. Dark.
So that’s it Dream Theater here we go. Nominated for the 2025 Olivier Award for Best New Dance Work, this new evening work was created by Israeli-born German choreographer, composer and filmmaker Hofesh Shechter (formerly of the world-famous Batsheva Dance Company) and performed by his UK-based Hofesh Shechter Company at the New Powerhouse: International Festival.
Here’s what happened: When the curtains opened, the man (we called him “The Dreamer”) stood there, staring at us. Then the curtain closes. When they were partially opened again there was now a group of people standing there, staring at us. Power outage/shutdown. The lights come on/turn on and a group of people dance in slow motion in the dim, hazy light. They leaned back, arms raised, bouncing to the music’s steady beat, with bass so low we could feel it in our seats. Viewed from the side, the hunched dancers pass between them like creatures of the night. The group kept dancing like they didn’t notice, but we did. Dark.
We then return to Dreamer, who is opening the second set of curtains in the back and crawling through them. (This game with the audience continues throughout: several sets of curtains open and close, revealing new layers of the stage and the subconscious, and crimson and blue lights flicker on and off, creating dreamlike sequences.) The dreamer peers toward the once again closed curtains, and someone jumps toward him. He caught them as the music exploded into a head-spinning rhythm, and the curtains finally opened fully and all 12 dancers knelt as if they’d been there all along.
At one point, someone pulled out a microphone from the wing and said, “Good evening, everyone, and welcome to the theater of your dreams.” “Your” speaks volumes. This is not their dream, it is our dream. Then, three musicians in red (Yaron Engler, Sabio Janiak and James Keane) took to the stage and started playing electronic music. This sense of layering is present throughout the work in multiple ways—sounds on top of voices, curtains behind curtains, bodies beneath bodies.
Over the course of 90 minutes, the dancers barely stopped moving. They seem to appear out of thin air and disappear into thin air. They limp like monkeys, slide on their bellies like lizards, scratch their heads and backs and kick their hind legs like dirty dogs. They rotate as if there are no joints in the body, or perhaps too many joints. They danced like we all wanted to dance without anyone watching, and then sat on the ground, criss-crossing the applesauce, watching us.
Dream Theater It’s a surreal masterpiece, in large part because of Schechter’s raw, in-depth choreography (influenced by the Gaga movement language of his work with Batsheva and Ohad Naharin, while maintaining its own uniqueness), but also because of the dancers’ ability to give it their all with their entire beings. Because both movement and music come from Schechter’s mind, there is a creative seamlessness that results in the beat becoming the body and the body becoming the beat. The dreamers are us, we are the dreamers. Although the work is unified, it encompasses many different atmospheres: a 3:00 AM rave, a zombie apocalypse, psychedelic folk dancing, a bonfire on the beach, an almost forgotten childhood memory.
But the talent of Tom Visser’s lighting design cannot be overstated. It, along with Schechter and Neil Black’s set design, creates a cinematic atmosphere and narrative, and without these elements the piece wouldn’t be what it is. The costumes, designed by Osnat Kelner, are the perfect complement – pedestrian, cool, but a little askew.
Towards the end of the piece there was a resounding climax, the dancers’ movements were in perfect unison and everyone was wide awake. They sprinted and spun, their joy palpable, and when the music stopped, the silence was like a salve. My ears filled with it, my body buzzed, and the dancers slowly swayed into the darkness.
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