This study aims to examine the structure of unconscious sensory expression in Hofesh Shechter’s Theatre of Dreams through Freud’s theory of dream-work. To this end, both a literature review and a performance analysis of [Hofesh Shechter’s Theatre of Dreams] were conducted, focusing on the mechanisms of condensation and displacement in movement, music, lighting, and spatial composition. We found that, first, the mechanism of condensation manifested as a physical entity through the visual signification of bodily movement, taking the form of collective bodies and the superimposition of contrasting movements. Second, displacement was expressed through the spatial dimensionalization of sound and lighting, revealing the fluid transfer of affect through intentional disjunction between music and movement and the displacement of sensory perception. Third, these phenomena resulted in the audience’s experience being unconsciously drawn into the nonlinear narrative structure. This study suggests that the expressive domain of contemporary dance is expanding beyond mere bodily play toward a sensory-centered total art form.

This study examines Hofesh Shechter's Theatre of Dreams through Walter Benjamin's concept of phantasmagoria, asking how the sensory conditions of modernity are organized on stage. It draws on field observations of both performances of the Korean premiere at the Seongnam Arts Center in March 2025 and on the performance program. At the bodily level, the gambler, the flâneur, and the collector serve as operational categories for movement that is triggered and repeated; at the temporal level, duration, repetition, interruption, and juxtaposition constitute continuity and rupture together; at the spatial level, curtains and lighting reveal certain bodies while concealing others. In all three, perceptible outcomes are selectively separated from the conditions that organize them. The phantasmagoria in this work is not a form that conceals everything but one that selectively distributes what is brought to the fore and what is left behind-revealing that the sensory reality of the modern subject is constituted within conditions already selected and arranged.