Thursday, 16 October 2025

Dance: A dreamy odyssey

Hofesh Shechter Company
Theatre of Dreams
choreography and music Hofesh Shechter
dancers Tristan Carter, Robinson Cassarino, Frédéric Despierre, Rachel Fallon, Cristel de Frankrijker, Mickaël Frappat, Justine Gouache, Zakarius Harry, Alex Haskins, Keanah Faith Simin, Juliette Valerio, Chanel Vyent
musicians Yaron Engler, Sabio Janiak, James Keane
lighting Tom Visser • costumes Osnat Kelner
music Yaron Engler • sets Niall Black
Sadler's Wells, London • 15-18.Oct.25 ★★★★

Drawing on how dance explores feelings without offering answers, this surreal show unfolds as an almost cinematic odyssey, propelling the audience through a swirling display of vignettes that touch on how we see ourselves reflected in the world. Based in London since 2002, Israeli-born Hofesh Schechter inventively divides the stage using quick-moving curtains and shifting light, transporting us through a wide variety of scenes that are visually dazzling and intriguingly emotive. It often echoes a David Lynch movie: it's impossible to clearly understand, but we feel everything.

The scene is set as a performer in street clothes ducks through a gap in the curtain on-stage. Inside, visions emerge from all sides as more and more curtains slide apart, glimpsing people in poses or groups in wild abandon. Spotlights isolate performers, sometimes in a striking colour wash. Choreography is full-bodied and often looks like anarchic flailing, but this is all carefully staged, as ripples of patterns emerge in the movement, sometimes resolving into full-cast numbers performed in unison. Little dramatic moments are engulfed by crowds of revellers. Sometimes a larger tableaux depicts a specific event.

Music accompanying this ranges from extended sequences of pulsing rhythms to more melodic numbers. At one point a three-piece band dressed in red pops up on stage, then seems to miraculously teleport from place to place as they play instruments and provide vocals. This visual trickery echoes everywhere, as the dancers must race in the darkness to be in the correct place and position exactly when a curtain parts. So what we can't see feeds into the way we interpret what we observe. And at one point the performers encourage us to stand up and join them.

Dancers are constantly in motion, dressed to party but frequently switching things up, including costume changes on the move and a couple of naked moments. They run in place, gyrate on a dance floor and burst out in celebration. There are also yearning scenes in which they watch someone else perform before diving in themselves. Much of this plays out at high energy, with continual explosions of movement, sound and light. And there are also astonishing quiet moments. So the show feels fragmented but thoroughly involving, taking us on a trip into the corners of our imagination.


for details,
SADLER'S WELLS >
photos by Ulrich Geischë, Todd McDonald, Tom Visser • 15.Oct.25

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