Before beginning this review, I need to out myself. Dunedin is a small city, and those of us who are interested in the performative arts form a cosy, intertwined community. I was going to use the term ‘incestuous,’ but that seems a bit sticky.

I am an enthusiastic supporter of Dunedin-based poets, Joan Fleming and Loveday Why (who make up the experimental dance company And Why), both of whom I know personally, and of their fusion of performance and poetics.

Although I was predisposed to enjoy this particular work even before I walked in to the Community Gallery, I was very impressed by THERE IS NO PERSON WITHOUT A WORLD. The show—which consists of two separate pieces from And Why andWith Lime— is a complex and emotionally intense experience, in which two very different dances / theatrical performances unfold from common themes of migration, alienation and longing.

The first section, from Wellington-based interdisciplinary arts company With Lime, incorporates filmed and live performance, blurring the division between art and theatrical/dance performance. As I understand it, this fluidity is common to much butoh, which is a collective name for a wide range of techniques and inspirations for dance, theatre, or movement. Traditionally, it may be performed in white body makeup; and while it may be purely conceptual in style, it is often performed using slow, controlled movements.  According to their press release, With Lime uses ‘Critical Butoh’ as a liberating force ‘to propel a creative transformative expression’ that ‘seeks to liberate the mind from the way it habitually thinks, the body from the way it habitually moves and the self from how it habitually conceives of itself and its world.’

This desire to break through and disrupt habitual motivations is evident in the first section, ‘It takes 200 muscles to take a single step.’ Miki Seifert’s pre-recorded performance is projected onto the gallery wall. Seifert’s body moves slowly through space, her whitened hands (filmed in pitiless close-up) clenching and unclenching, tightening and loosening. The camera, an unemotional eye, records and displays the movement of muscle in her naked back as pure focused movement.

William Franco, who studied Butoh with Diego Pinon, Don McCleod, Oguri, and Shinichi Momo Koga, is initially motionless. In contrast to the controlled purity of Seifert’s gestures, Franco’s movements are jerky, erratic as he fumbles to release himself from his confining clothing — a metaphor, I think, for the painful journey that we as individuals must take as we seek self-transformation.

The second section, ‘Yo soy Chicano (I am a Chicano),’ performed by Franco alone as he interacts with a series of projections that explore emotional states associated with immigrants: alienation, disempowerment, disconnection. I was initially bewildered by this powerful piece as I struggled to make sense of the repeated images—glistening strawberries, crouched figures, tattooed women, amped-up cars—before I realised that although the cultural context is unfamiliar, the passions that were being evoked are universal.

The performance by Fleming and Why is very different. Approaching the dance form as published poets, they refer to their experience of performing butoh as deepening and intensifying their poetry practice. As such, by drawing upon the ‘arc of form and embodiment’ present in their own sense of poetry during performance vivifies their butoh. The result is ‘a process-driven performance that seeks to awaken authentic response within the performer and the audience.’

The two performers, (also with white body paint and clad in form-fitting remnants of underwear and tights), mirror and respond to each other in a much more co-ordinated manner. The clinginess and damaged state of their garments accents their limbs and heightens an impression of fragility; they are at one and the same time beautiful and deeply distressed, alien and rooted in the material world.

As I watched, my mind was filled with images of broken discarded dolls—an image heightened by the masks of nylon the performers pulled over their faces at one point—leading me to wonder about the gender specificity of this performance. At one point, Fleming and Why dance with/react to white feminine undergarments and nightclothes, both colour and garment bring to mind unsettling associations.

Although both companies approach butoh in very different ways, these two pieces grow in impact through the way in which And Why andWith Limeparallel and echo the intensely personal and the politically universal. I feel privileged that I was able to see this unique collaboration. 

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