Friendly Reminder: remember you actually can breathe. Because Hofesh Shechter and his dancers will easily take your breath away in their Theatre of Dreams, an experience of visceral intensity, overwhelming sensation, and emotional immanence. You will literally forget to breathe, gritting your teeth tightly.
Before encountering the dancers, what impresses you might be the punk style beats, mentioned by Shechter in the post-show talk as Pink-Floydian, keeps a certain degree of intensity. A presence of immanence. Even in some quieter moments distilled with gentler, chanson-style music, the beats are still there to remain the humming, vibrating tension beneath the surface.
The thirteen dancers embody the rhythm with a physicality that seamlessly shuttles in between the powerful and masculine strength in line with the beats, and the dreamlike and fluid flow of connections. However, this doesn’t feel as an oscillation between tension and release, or strength and vulnerability – on the contrary, the sensation remains the same, always so visceral and so vital.
The recurring use of a black curtain, always half-open, feels like an ingenious device to amplify the performance’s intensity. Much like wearing closed headphones sharpens your focus on sound, these partial closures heighten the energy. The curtain becomes more than a barrier—it creates a sense of hidden potential, as if the unseen parts of the stage are charged with the same vibrating energy we witness.
And then, there’s the final scene: a mise en scène where the dancers stand still, becoming silhouettes under Tom Visser’s minimalist lighting. Then a female dancer in silver dress starts to dance again, and they move again, each with a hand over one ear, and in complete silence. No music. Blackout. The last scene feels like a lingering reflection and an extended invitation by Shechter: to pay absolute attention to your own sensation, your breath, your vision… to carry on the “dance”.
Theatre of Dreams is overwhelming. It is an experience you live through, a profound sensory onslaught that shakes you, drains you, and yet, somehow, leaves you craving more. It’s not about transcendence or elevation—it’s about presence, about being here, now, caught in the friction of movement and sound. The oscillation of emotions, the layering of sensations—this is an experience-scape, a site for infinite possibility.
Shechter’s choreography is not about bodies, but about boundaries—constantly shifting, breaking down, and reconstructing the lines between dancer and audience, between sound and silence, between being and becoming. It is an experience that burns with intensity and will never be the same twice. Even if you crave to recapture that moment you experienced tonight, it’s a once- in-a-life-time encounter.
Theatre of Dreams is at Sadler’s Wells until 12th October 2024
