"primal and ethereal"
(Oxford Times)

Following soon after the successful 'Jelizma' collaboration at Freud café and the 'premiere' of Bona Dea, this performance was Café Reason's first major show. The five separate items dealt with the essential themes of the cycle of birth, life, and death, of our identities and our personal relationships, and the relationship between this and other worlds, that the group would continue to explore in all their subsequent work. While the first pieces were choreographed by Jeannie Donald, the development of Bona Dea began the collaborative creative process that became one of Café Reason's hallmarks.

Sometimes there are epiphanies, brief moments of vision when we see the true significance of things, before we submerge again into normal chaos. ...Once I was walking along a beach and just off the shore there floated a beautiful sea-monster. It had been in the water so long it was impossible to tell if it was a whale, a cow, a man - pure white flesh, white broken bones - whatever it had been once, it had undergone a sea change...JDM

(Ensemble cast)

Suspended between heaven and earth in a ritual landscape, the two worlds sometimes meet. The numinous is visible in a salmon¹s leap, in a flight of steps, a shamanic journey, a dream. Birth, life and death.

(Solo by Jeannie Donald)

I love you, I hate you, I love you, I hate you, I need you,
I want you, I need you, I want you, who are you? who are you?

(Duet with Lee Adams and Jules McKim)

Tracing the journey from a state of innocence to intimacy.

(Duet with Jeannie Donald and Fabrizia Verrecchia)

Cycles of birth and transformation; the good goddess returns bringing light after the darkness.

(Lee Adams, Jeannie Donald, Ayala Kingsley, Fabrizia Verrecchia, Suzette Youngs)