At Sadler’s Wells East, choreographer Pepa Ubera invites us into a dream — not the kind you wake from, but the kind you become part of. The Machine of Horizontal Dreams isn’t a traditional performance. It’s an act of collective imagination, a tender collision of human and machine, body and data, ritual and rave.
From the moment you walk into the space, it’s clear this isn’t your usual sit-down-and-watch affair. The seating is gone. Instead, the audience is gathered in a loose, circular formation — a living organism of onlookers and participants. Beanbags and chairs scatter the stage floor as curved screens cocoon the space, humming with projections: strings of data, pulsing phrases, shifting forms. It feels like stepping into a queer digital cathedral — glowing, alive, and full of intention.
“Queer, cosmic, and completely transcendent — Pepa Ubera’s latest work doesn’t just blur boundaries, it obliterates them.”
credits: Noémie Reijnen
Dancing in the Dreamscape
Ubera’s work has always challenged what choreography can be — and The Machine of Horizontal Dreams continues that exploration with fearless grace. The movement language is fluid yet fiercely precise, bodies folding and unfurling like data streams made flesh. The five lead performers — each distinct in energy and form — embody a world where control and surrender exist in perfect tension.
There’s a sense of curiosity driving every gesture. Dancers ripple through sequences that feel part meditation, part rebellion. Sometimes, they move with machine-like precision, at other times with disarming softness, as if pulled by invisible threads. The transitions between solos and ensemble work are seamless, creating a rhythm that feels organic, alive, and unpredictable — like dream logic translated into motion.
“It’s not choreography that tells you what to think — it’s choreography that lets you feel your way through the unknown.”
And then there’s the ensemble — a group of community performers who move with raw, heartfelt authenticity. Their inclusion isn’t symbolic; it’s integral. They expand the space from performance into communion, a shared territory where art meets collective energy. In their presence, the abstract becomes human, the conceptual becomes personal.
Queer Futurism and the Politics of Connection
At its core, The Machine of Horizontal Dreams is a queer exploration of connection — how we build it, how we lose it, and how we might reimagine it in a digital age. Ubera’s use of technology isn’t cold or distancing. Instead, it’s sensual, intimate. Data flows like desire, screens shimmer like skin, and code becomes a language for care.
There’s something beautifully queer in how Ubera refuses hierarchy. The work doesn’t privilege the human over the digital, or performer over audience. Instead, it creates a horizontal space — where all energies exist side by side, exchanging, responding, dreaming together. It’s a kind of cyber-queer communion, where technology becomes a tool not for separation, but for deep empathy.
“In a world obsessed with vertical power — upward, hierarchical, controlling — Ubera offers something radical: the freedom of the horizontal.”
The performance’s sound design, a mesmerising blend of ambient hums, pulses, and waves, functions almost like a heartbeat for the room. It guides you, disarms you, and occasionally, overwhelms you — in the best way. It’s the sonic equivalent of being wrapped in an electric current of possibility.
Ambiguity as an Act of Freedom
One of Ubera’s most powerful tools is ambiguity. Streams of numbers flash across the screens without immediate meaning; lights flicker in patterns that feel like coded poetry. Yet instead of alienating, these abstractions invite interpretation. They ask us to step into uncertainty — to co-create meaning rather than consume it.
In a time when art is so often reduced to explanation, this openness feels deliciously defiant. The Machine of Horizontal Dreams trusts its audience. It assumes we are capable of wonder, of curiosity, of not knowing. That, in itself, feels radically queer — a celebration of the uncertain, the fluid, the undefined.
“Ambiguity here isn’t confusion — it’s liberation. It’s the freedom to dream without boundaries.”
And when the final transformation arrives — when the performers beckon the audience to join them in the dream — it’s pure alchemy. The lights warm, the bass deepens, and suddenly you’re not an observer but a participant. People move, sway, laugh. The line between stage and spectator dissolves, replaced by a shared rhythm, a collective pulse. It’s euphoric, intimate, and utterly human.
A New Language of Movement
Ubera’s genius lies in how she builds worlds. Every element — movement, projection, sound, structure — feeds into an ecosystem of experience. The piece isn’t trying to explain the future; it’s trying to embody one. It feels like an experiment in how art, community, and technology can coexist in radical harmony.
There are echoes of queer futurists here — the same utopian pulse that runs through the works of artists like Juliana Huxtable, Mykki Blanco, or even FKA twigs. But Ubera’s world is distinctly her own: less about spectacle, more about presence. She’s building a language that’s as tender as it is experimental, as emotional as it is intellectual.
“This isn’t dance that exists to be watched — it’s dance that exists to be felt.”
When the lights finally fade and you step back into the East London night, you carry something with you — a residue of light, movement, and meaning. It’s that rare post-show feeling that doesn’t fade with applause: the sense that you’ve been changed, just a little.
Final Thoughts
The Machine of Horizontal Dreams is more than a performance — it’s a proposition. A reimagining of what art can do when it stops performing for the gaze and starts creating space for the soul. Pepa Ubera has built not a show, but a shared landscape, one that hums with queer possibility and human connection.
YASS Magazine 