Adelaide Festival
Hofesh Shechter
Festival Theatre
Season Closed
Reviewed by Samara Purnell
As the start time of 2pm came and went, distant drumming could be heard. About ten minutes later the lights dimmed and the drumming grew louder.
A dancer mounted the stage from the front row and Hofesh Shechter’s Theatre of Dreams began.
Our dreamer attempts to get his bearings in the muted lighting, accompanied by a muffled, pulsing drum beat.
The curtains get an epic work out, as they are half opened, closed, pulled across the stage, momentarily open, quickly shut, revealing and removing glimpses and vignettes of the dancers in various states - individuals and groups flawlessly appearing and disappearing in the most remarkably perfect transitions.
Photo by Andrew Beveridge
The drums are thumping loudly now and, windswept, the solo dancer from the audience vanishes into the curtains, beginning his descent down the rabbit hole. Into the subconscious, dream-state, a timeless, placeless landscape of music and energy.
As dancers posed, writhed and pulsed in split seconds as the curtains swept them away, exposed them or hid them it called to mind the movie trope of looking into windows in a highrise apartment block, noticing the activities and possible narratives behind each one. 
Photo by Andrew Beveridge
In a sequence that conjured up smokey whiskey bar-cum-Baz Luhrmann movie, one of the dancers takes to a microphone stand to theatrically welcome the audience to the Theatre of Dreams.
The soundscape of Shechter’s own creation comprised the drums and beats to begin with and three on-stage musicians who appeared throughout, introducing genres with energy and gusto, from piano, blues and jazz, Cuban, African, Latin American, tango and gospel. Middle Eastern and European musical influences swelled to a cacophony of sound and created the feeling of a global consciousness.
Primitive, tribal, ape-like, the dancers strutted across stage to the beat of drums. Vignettes of sacrificial rituals, raves, folk dances and mime flashed past. French show girls, school classes, first dance classes, celebrations, orgies, funerals all seem to come up. Momentary singing when the dancers joined the musicians was particularly poignant.
Surprisingly, most of the depictions and moods created weren’t terrifying or nightmarish, with the exception of perhaps the flat-out sprinting and the “being naked in front of everyone” one, but even then, the nude male dancer acknowledged the audience, seemingly devoid of much embarrassment. Fleeting moments of tenderness, intimacy, passion were interrupted by the group as everyone was continually swept back into the masses. An attempt to “escape”, even if spat back through the curtains, was quickly rectified by being pulled back into the action.
This included the audience, from the emergence of the dancer from it at the start, to a dance break where the house lights came up, the performers left the stage and joined the audience, encouraging a dance-along. This will always be a high risk choice - from breaking the mood or in this case the overwhelming musical and movement tension, to unsuccessful attempts to make the audience do something. Luckily, this show was performed to a group filled with other dancers and dance lovers who were more than happy to jump up and oblige.
Shechter’s choreographic vocabulary included influences from across the globe, but primarily was jerking arms, hands, feet, a mass of limbs thrown about and surely some of the biggest body rolls and hip circles humanly possible. Despite the apparent freedom and abandon in the mood and movement, every single move was precise, executed by the ensemble to perfection.
The ensemble, costumed in everything from disco dresses, to long satin slips, loose pants and crew necks to patterned suits, had a maturity, a confidence about it. Each dancer moved like a weightless puppet - the ease and skill on display was really something to behold.
Photo by Andrew Beveridge
Thematically and choreographically, there were striking similarities to the Stephanie Lake production “The Chronicles”, also showing at the Adelaide Festival and it was wonderful to see these shows in tandem.
Both create a sense of a driving force possessing the dancers, needing to find a breaking point, an exhaustion. To witness this process as the breath is heard and the sweat is glistening on bodies, is to marvel at the fitness, endurance, talent and training that these dancers undertake.
Theatre of Dreams builds tension through relentless movement. It is a feast of overwhelming sound and energy, music and moody red lighting, joyful and frenetic movement with a fascination for the miniscule details. It is hypnotizing and at the same time the most energetic dreams one could imagine.
The staging and even the curtains alone is an impressive effort from the backstage and fly crew.
Several times it seemed the performance was reaching a conclusion, only to give way to another sequence, longer ones than at the beginning.
It felt like being in the movie “Inception” descending through layers and dreams, making you wonder which “reality” is real. They are us and we are them.
The eventual end was unexpected. Another layer, another possibility, a sehnsucht for feeling, for joy, for what dreams may come, as the dancers themselves became silhouettes frozen in subconscious, in front of old-fashioned theatre curtains - perhaps waiting in time, for their theatre of dreams.
