Asymptote
with Orlando & Frauke - FNB Dance Umbrella
– Music composed in collaboration with Duncan Shelwell
Asymptote is an extraordinary development of the Ankoku Butoh dance and its radical transformation of the body. In an innovative approach to the form, Asymptote integrates soundscape, costume design, and reactive motion graphics together with the performer’s Butoh body to explore the relationship between the living body and the natural world. Butoh, the controversial avant-garde Japanese dance form also known as the ‘dance of darkness’, has inspired, primarily through its originating spirit, Tatsumi Hijikata and his principal performer Yoko Ashikawa – a seemingly inexhaustible exploration into the realm of body consciousness. Asymptote will feature the solo performer, Frauke, one of the leading exponents of Ankoku Butoh who has developed the Butoh body in both Sweden and Japan. The choreography by South African Butoh researcher and creative director Orlando Vincent Truter uses the Butoh dance choreographic notation system to integrate soundscape, costume design, reactive motion graphics and the Butoh body - revealing a world in which the different elements become more than the sum of their parts. Asymptote celebrates our physical materiality. The dance embodies infinite connections to the elemental, mathematical and patterned nature of our ecosystem.
Performance: Frauke
Choreography: Orlando & Frauke
Soundscape: Duncan Shelwell & Givan Lötz
Motion Graphics: Olivier Schildt & Garth Van Heerden
Costumes: Superella & Orlando
Photography: Christo Doherty
