(created in collaboration with Josephine Grundy)

This project is a performance work involving a butoh dancer, viola and drum set.

The work exists in response to the human need to process our mortality; to acknowledge that somehow, we need to 'live death', to move through that darkness as it were, and in so doing, connect to other ever present forces in the universe that impact all of being - the seen and the unseen - the living, the dead and the not yet born.

Shrines to the ancestors, memories of departed souls; what are the threads that run through the earth, deep in the foundation of humanity’s collective DNA, the commonality that defies categorisation and can sustain a species under threat - a threat of its own making?

As an expression of embodied spirit the often slow movements of butoh have been likened to "...smoke rising from burnt grass" (Professor Kayo Mikami), a meandering contemplative image but one that arises from a catalyst of heat and friction. And equally, the qualities of serenity and balance that the Fang so cherish and express in the carefully calculated proportions of their reliquary statues, these objects also embody an alert watchfulness that seeks to both guard and warn. Warn the uninitiated of something incomprehensible and untameable that may rise from within.

By engaging with the diverse traditions of Japanese Butoh and Fang reliquary art 'The Unseen Thread' brings audiences into a paradoxical field of awareness; one which resists fixity but yet is a constant presence in life. "We all carry darkness somewhere' (Dark Ballet - a film by Taichi Kimura), be it the 'darkness' butoh explores in taboo subjects, primal impulses and raw untapped emotions - or the 'darkness' of the world of the ancestors, forces that the nomadic Fang carry with them whilst acknowledging their reach into the present through the manifest energies and purpose of their reliquary art.

In utilising viola and drum-set the sonic world of 'The Unseen Thread' reaches at once into the lyrical, voice like qualities often associated with European classism and equally, into the visceral earth bound immediacy of African drumming, thus creating a provocative, compelling and fascinating contemporary sound which combines seamlessly with the physicality of the works butoh dancer.