While the audience was being prepared in the Grand Hall of Powerhouse Arts, a former power plant in Brooklyn, a man in a blue suit walked down the stage. He walked slowly, as if with pleasure, and the music began to slow down and he became angry. The house lights stayed on, but the audience quickly fell silent. He paused to look over his shoulder, then was whisked between the curtains and left. It’s dark outside.
How was this Theater of dreams it started. The new work of the long night in the evening, nominated for the 2025 Olivier award for the new production of the new dance, the German Israeli composer, composer, and member of the Hofesh shechter company as part of the new Powerhouse: Festival of foreign arts.
Here’s how it goes: When the curtains are up, this man (Let’s call him the dreamer) is standing there, staring at us. Then the curtains came close. When they opened the section again, now there is a group of people standing there, staring at us. Black / close. The lights are turned on / open, and the group is a slow club dancing in a dim, cheerful light. They lean back, arms raised, and hum to the beat of the music, the bass so low we can hear it in our seats. From the side, high-class dancers cut into them like creatures of the night. The group ends up dancing like they didn’t see it, but we have it. It’s dark outside.
Then we’re back to Dreamer, who opens the second set of curtains and crawls back. (This play with the audience continues throughout: many sets of curtains open and close, revealing new layers of the stage and a dreamy light, and someone dreaming has entered him, another person dreaming has entered him. He catches them as the music bursts from its slave in the sky and the curtains finally open all the way, and all 12 dancers descend as if they were always there.
At one point, someone pulls a microphone out of the wings and says, “Evening, everyone, and welcome to the theater of dreams.” “Yours” says. It’s not their dream, it’s ours. Later, the three singers in Red (Yaron Engler, Sabio Janiak and James Keane) come on stage and start playing over the electronic score. This combination runs through the whole piece in different ways – sounds on top of sounds, curtains behind curtains, bodies under bodies.
Over the course of 90 minutes, the dancers rarely stop moving. They seem to appear out of nowhere and disappear into thin air. They hobble like monkeys and slither on their bellies like lizards, scratch their heads and backs and kick their back legs like dirty dogs. They focus as they have no limbs left in their bodies, or perhaps too many. They dance like we all wish we could dance when no one is watching, so sit back, criss-cross applesauce, to watch us.
Theater of dreams Is a surreal art, in large part because of the primal of Shechter, deep choreography (influenced by his time with batsheva and Ohad Naharin’s Change the language), but also because of the power of the dancer to take it fully with the creatures of all. And because the movement and the music both come from Shechter’s mind, there is a creative seam that results in the beat being the body and the body being the beat. The dream is us, and we are the dream. While the work is cohesive, it contains many different vibes: a three o’clock rave, a zombie dance, a psychedelic dance, a beach bonfire, a close memory of a child.
But the beauty of Tom Visser It’s lighting, and the systematic design by Shechter with nial Black, created a cinematic atmosphere and narrative, and without those things, the piece would not be itself. The clothes, designed by Osnat Kelner, were the perfect addition – cool but a little bit small.
Near the end of the piece, there is a big clip where the dancers move in flawless unison, and everyone is high. They enter and are thrown, and the excitement is palpable, and when the music stops, the silence is heard like a salve. My ears were turned to it, my body softened, as the dancers slowly drifted into the darkness.
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