Time, power, transformation...

"every performance they
give is life-changing"
(Jenny Lewis)

Café Reason returned to the Pegasus Theatre in May 1997 with this sell-out show. The five pieces that made up the programme ranged from Atrium, which was devised as a bizarre game of chance, through the dream-like duet for conjoined dresses Lost Garden and the "comically imaginative" metamorphoses of Papier Mâché, to the mysterious symbolism of Le Bateau Ivre and Egg. Newcomers to butoh, Janette Coglin, Conroy Harris, and Susie Hendry, joined the company for this performance.

The vestibule of life in which Chance (the veteran pianist Dave Dunbar) plays honky-tonk.

(Ana Barbour, Jeannie Donald, Ayala Kingsley, Jules McKim)

There is no beginning and no end. Tracing our connection to ancestral experience, the link between the curled embryo and the coiled ammonite, two dancers explore the balance between movement and stillness, between freedom and restraint.

(Ayala Kingsley and Fabrizia Verrecchia)

Matter does not disappear. It undergoes transformation, the same atoms are recycled endlessly. Memories of ships, of forests, of sailors, of journeys are borne on the veil of time.

This piece was later incorporated into the site-specific project The Forest That Sailed Away at Minster Lovell Hall.

(Ensemble cast)

Cover, wrap, conceal, protect, influence, inspire, oppress, present, reveal, decorate, destroy. News, views and use. A paper life.

This solo by Ana Barbour, an experienced butoh dancer who joined Café Reason early in 1999, featured a giant paper creature. It was accepted by The Place theatre in London as part of their 2000 'Resolution' season of new work.

(inspired by an idea from the poet Jenny Lewis) In China 4000 years ago the court astrologer would draw maps of the stars on the hillside and, in a trance state, dance through them. His dance, rather than merely interpreting, would actively influence and alter the energy of the constellations. All time converges on the present moment; past and future have no power, everything to come grows out of now. The burden of the past is transformed by the dance into delight.

(Ensemble cast)