When it comes to dance, it's difficult to tear the focus away from the body, especially when there's a heavily pregnant performer onstage. Yet Bo Kittiphon's latest butoh creation, A Fetus' Dream, co-directed by Grisana Punpeng, also journeys beyond the physicality and into places we seldom associate with motherhood.
She might be expecting, but that won't stop Kittiphon Udomrattanakulchai from taking to the stage in a pregnancy-inspired butoh performance
The performance begins in silence, with four dancers lying still on the floor in various foetal positions. The forms begin to grow — expanding from their simple roundness — in slow, minute movements. After a while, the silence starts to feel comforting.
The forms do not develop into images of bright and innocent new lives as the title of the show may suggest though.
What follows the gentle, hushed pace of the introduction is a series of dark solos — convulsions, violent jerking motions and gnarled fingers and arms. The performers' breaths are startling gasps and fearful cries. The process of coming into life and growing up, as depicted here, feels violent and lonesome, almost grotesque.
The performance then shifts into a fiery territory, and the energy among the dancers, who are now moving in sync, is raw and primal. The dancers are much more visible in this section of the show as they are caked in white powder. Their hair is frizzy and wild and their costumes (by Nicha Puranasamriddhi) are fashionably slashed. The intense and dynamic score, designed by Baptiste Mauerhan, occasionally sounds like oppressive bursts of light. It is as if the bodies are struggling to come into their own and have a life of their own.
While the first half of A Fetus' Dream is nightmarish and largely confined in darkness, the final scene of the dance eases itself out of that frenetic territory and opens up into a bright, calm and grounded place. Bo enters, eight months pregnant, draped in white, with her belly fully exposed. She moves slowly and carefully, as if mimicking the movement of the life inside her body.
When she turns around to face the audience, we can see her belly enlarging and contracting as she and her child breathe. Gentle sounds of nature surround her and the mother-to-be looks almost mythical. The ultrasound image of her moving unborn child appears on the wall as Bo sits still on the ground with her eyes closed and her mouth in a small, peaceful smile, as if in a state of meditation. Bo performs the final scene as is she is both the one giving birth and the one being born and it is a beautiful, soothing and powerful performance.
This final part comes off intimate and personal rather than as a general statement about motherhood and pregnancy as she showed in her previous creation, Whispers Of The Shadow Of A Quivering Leaf, which was another intensely personal piece. In A Fetus' Dream, Bo's butoh is less a dance of darkness and more a place for meditation and contemplation, and while it ventures into places of darkness and may even originate there, it is always searching for the light.
A Fetus' Dream continues until Saturday, at 7.30pm, at Crescent Moon Space, Pridi Banomyong Institute. Tickets are 550 baht (500 baht for advanced payment). Call 099-352-3092 or email bo.movement@gmail.com.
