Why Hofesh Shechter’s ‘Theatre of Dreams’ Is Such a Surreal Escape

<img decoding="async" class="lazyload size-full-width wp-image-1600894" src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==" data-src="https://observer.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/11/20251113-DSC06243.jpg?quality=80&w=970" alt="" width="970" height="647" data-caption='Hofesh Shechter’s <em>Theatre of Dreams</em> pushes audiences into a world where choreography, sound and light blur the boundaries between conscious experience and the subconscious. <span class=”lazyload media-credit”>STEVEN PISANO</span>’>

While the audience was still settling into the massive Grand Hall of Powerhouse Arts, a former power plant in Brooklyn, a man in a blue suit walked down the aisle and onto the stage. He moved slowly, as if in a trance, and the music began just as slowly—pulsing and muffled. The house lights stayed on, but the audience quickly quieted. He paused to look over his shoulder at us, then slipped between the curtains and was gone. Black out.

This was how Theatre of Dreams began. The new evening-length work, nominated for a 2025 Olivier Award for Best New Dance Production, is by the Israeli-born German choreographer, composer, and filmmaker Hofesh Shechter, a former member of the world-famous Batsheva Dance Company, and performed by his U.K.-based Hofesh Shechter Company as part of the new Powerhouse: International arts festival.

Here is how it continues: when the curtains peek open, the man (let’s call him The Dreamer) is standing there, staring at us. Then the curtains close. When they partially open again, there’s now a group of people standing there, staring at us. Black out/close. Lights up/open, and the group is slow-motion club dancing in a dim, hazy glow. They dip back, arms raised, and bounce to the music’s steady beat, the bass so low we can feel it in our seats. From the side, hunched-over dancers cut across them like creatures of the night. The group keeps dancing like they haven’t noticed, but we have. Black out.

<img decoding="async" class="lazyload size-full-width wp-image-1600891" src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==" data-src="https://observer.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/11/20251113-DSC06444.jpg?quality=80&w=970" alt="" width="970" height="647" data-caption='Shechter’s movement language draws on his background with the Batsheva Dance Company and the influence of Ohad Naharin’s Gaga technique, while still asserting a voice entirely his own. <span class=”lazyload media-credit”>Photo: Steven Pisano</span>’>

Then we’re back to The Dreamer, who is opening a second set of curtains further back and crawling through. (This game with the audience continues throughout: several sets of curtains open and close, revealing new layers of the stage and the subconscious, and the dark red and blue lights pop on and off, creating flashes of dreamlike sequences.) The Dreamer peeks into the closed-again curtain, and someone leaps out at him. He catches them as the music explodes into its headbanging rhythm and the curtains finally open all the way, and all 12 dancers are getting down as if they’ve always been there.

At one point, someone brings out a microphone from the wings and says, “Good evening, everyone, and welcome to your theater of dreams.” The “your” is telling. It’s not their dream, it’s ours. Later, three musicians in red (Yaron Engler, Sabio Janiak and James Keane) come onto the stage and start playing over the electronic score. This layering runs throughout the piece in various ways—sounds over sounds, curtains behind curtains, bodies beneath 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 gyrate like they have no joints left in their bodies, or maybe too many. They dance like we all wish we could dance when no one is watching, then sit on the ground, criss-cross applesauce, to watch us.

Theatre of Dreams is a surreal masterpiece, in large part because of Shechter’s primal, deep-down choreography (influenced by his time with Batsheva and Ohad Naharin’s Gaga movement language, while also remaining uniquely its own), but also due to the dancers’ ability to take it on full force with their entire beings. And because the movement and the music both came from Shechter’s mind, there is a creative seamlessness that results in the beat becoming the body and the body becoming the beat. The Dreamer is us, and we are The Dreamer. While the work is unified, it contains many different vibes: a rave at 3:00 a.m., a zombie apocalypse, a psychedelic folk dance, a bonfire on the beach, a near-forgotten childhood memory.

<img decoding="async" class="lazyload size-full-width wp-image-1600889" src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==" data-src="https://observer.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/11/20251113-DSC06725.jpg?quality=80&w=970" alt="" width="970" height="647" data-caption='Tom Visser’s lighting and a set created by Shechter and Niall Black give the work a cinematic intensity that shapes the emotional arc of the performance. <span class=”lazyload media-credit”>Photo: Steven Pisano</span>’>

But the brilliance of Tom Visser’s lighting design cannot be overstated. It, along with the set design by Shechter with Niall Black, created a cinematic atmosphere and narrative, and without those elements, the piece wouldn’t be itself. The costumes, designed by Osnat Kelner, were a perfect addition—pedestrian and cool but slightly askew.

Near the end of the piece, there is a loud climax where the dancers move in flawless unison, and everyone is wide awake. They lunge and spin, and the joy is palpable, and when the music cuts off, the silence feels like a salve. My ears were thick with it, my body humming, as the dancers slowly swayed into the darkness.

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