ArtSpoken & Reviews
My View: Dance Umbrella: AsymptoteFNB Dance Umbrella 201003/10/2010 10:06:16 
Robyn Sassen: "Asymptote" will mess with your head and leave you gutless; a total privilege to see it in Johannesburg. The irrevocable throbbing of the soundscape informing this fresh polished piece of Butoh immediately sets the tone for "Asymptote": it felt as though I were standing on my head, and the blood was relentlessly beating and bulging in my cranium, blocking out all other thoughts or awareness of myself. The heat in the auditorium contributed to this. Or was it heat generated by the work itself? Difficult to say; "Asymptote" embraces you whole, leaving very little behind. Frauke integrates her body with the lighting and the sound design of this piece with finality: she vanishes; she unfurls like a flower; she brings horror and unequivocal dystopia in the sheer vulnerability of her body, the pellucid gestures of her face. South African dance audiences are seldom privileged to see Butoh; Asymptote's exploitation of this manifestation of the medium in as technologically sophisticated and dark a capacity is a treat, a culture shock and a sensory mindfuck more direct than you can anticipate. An asymptote describes a line that continually approaches a given curve, but never meets it. It's about being asynchronous, asymmetrical. Cast your eye higher and you see "asylum" and "asunder" but also "astute". But this is not about allowing your eye to wander across dictionary columns. It's about how the work walks through a concept through nature, through definition, through physicality and through an organic representation of faith. Strangely, it's like a Japanese haiku caught in the interstices between body, light and sound. Frauke is a figure within a mandorla-shaped idea constructed from light and technology. She is like Shiva, Christ or an unborn foetus in a uterus. The light is palpable. Like flames, it begins on the floor, wafting up the walls in seemingly innocuous but nevertheless sinister orange tongues. Like explosions, with correlated "booms" in the sound, it explodes languidly into tendrils evocative of smoke. But the piece is also about an utterly engulfing sense of osmosis. In a complete and mesmerising engagement with white visual noise, Frauke slips into the interstices of her costumes, of her gesture: she makes herself huge and imposing as she dwarfs herself under the massive headdress of fabric and gold. It's a work with scantly defined reflections of closure, but one that will grab you by your essence and not let go. As you emerge from the theatre, the world engulfs you with its sound and grit; you might still feel as though your ears and nose should be bleeding from what you have just experienced. "Asymptote" choreographed by Orlando and Frauke with design by Superella and Orlando (costume), Garth van Heerden, Olivier Schildt and Dyllan Daker (visual concept design and motion graphic performance) and Duncan Shelwell and Givan Lötz (soundscape). Performed by Frauke. Barney Simon Theatre, Market Theatre Complex, Newtown. Until March 10. Robyn Sassen FNB Dance Umbrella 2010 info@frodo.co.za 011 023 8160 084 319 7844 Web site: http://www.artslink.co.za/arts
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