Whereas the viewers was nonetheless settling into the huge Grand Corridor of Powerhouse Arts, a former energy plant in Brooklyn, a person in a blue go well with walked down the aisle and onto the stage. He moved slowly, as if in a trance, and the music started simply as slowly—pulsing and muffled. The home lights stayed on, however the viewers shortly 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 Desires started. The brand new evening-length work, nominated for a 2025 Olivier Award for Finest New Dance Manufacturing, is by the Israeli-born German choreographer, composer, and filmmaker Hofesh Shechter, a former member of the world-famous Batsheva Dance Firm, and carried out by his U.Okay.-based Hofesh Shechter Firm as a part of the brand new Powerhouse: Worldwide arts pageant.
Right here is the way it continues: when the curtains peek open, the person (let’s name him The Dreamer) is standing there, observing us. Then the curtains shut. After they partially open once more, there’s now a bunch of individuals standing there, observing us. Black out/shut. Lights up/open, and the group is slow-motion membership dancing in a dim, hazy glow. They dip again, arms raised, and bounce to the music’s regular beat, the bass so low we will really feel it in our seats. From the facet, hunched-over dancers lower throughout them like creatures of the night time. The group retains dancing like they haven’t seen, however we have now. Black out.
Then we’re again to The Dreamer, who’s opening a second set of curtains additional again and crawling via. (This recreation with the viewers continues all through: a number of units of curtains open and shut, revealing new layers of the stage and the unconscious, and the darkish pink and blue lights pop on and off, creating flashes of dreamlike sequences.) The Dreamer peeks into the closed-again curtain, and somebody leaps out at him. He catches them because the music explodes into its headbanging rhythm and the curtains lastly open all the way in which, and all 12 dancers are getting down as in the event that they’ve all the time been there.
At one level, somebody brings out a microphone from the wings and says, “Good night, everybody, and welcome to your theater of goals.” The “your” is telling. It’s not their dream, it’s ours. Later, three musicians in pink (Yaron Engler, Sabio Janiak and James Keane) come onto the stage and begin enjoying over the digital rating. This layering runs all through the piece in varied methods—sounds over sounds, curtains behind curtains, our bodies beneath our bodies.
Over the course of 90 minutes, the dancers hardly ever cease transferring. They appear to look out of nowhere and disappear into skinny air. They hobble like monkeys and slither on their bellies like lizards, scratch their heads and backs and kick their again legs like soiled canines. They gyrate like they don’t have any joints left of their our bodies, or perhaps too many. They dance like all of us want we might dance when nobody is watching, then sit on the bottom, criss-cross applesauce, to look at us.
Theatre of Desires is a surreal masterpiece, largely due to Shechter’s primal, deep-down choreography (influenced by his time with Batsheva and Ohad Naharin’s Gaga motion language, whereas additionally remaining uniquely its personal), but additionally as a result of dancers’ means to take it on full pressure with their complete beings. And since the motion and the music each got here from Shechter’s thoughts, there’s a inventive seamlessness that leads to the beat changing into the physique and the physique changing into the beat. The Dreamer is us, and we’re The Dreamer. Whereas the work is unified, it accommodates many alternative vibes: a rave at 3:00 a.m., a zombie apocalypse, a psychedelic people dance, a bonfire on the seashore, a near-forgotten childhood reminiscence.
However the brilliance of Tom Visser’s lighting design can’t be overstated. It, together with the set design by Shechter with Niall Black, created a cinematic ambiance and narrative, and with out these components, the piece wouldn’t be itself. The costumes, designed by Osnat Kelner, had been an ideal addition—pedestrian and funky however barely askew.
Close to the top of the piece, there’s a loud climax the place the dancers transfer in flawless unison, and everyone seems to be awake. They lunge and spin, and the enjoyment is palpable, and when the music cuts off, the silence seems like a salve. My ears had been thick with it, my physique buzzing, because the dancers slowly swayed into the darkness.
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