"Tell all the truth but tell it slant, success in circuit lies, the truth must dazzle gradually or every man be blind."
(Emily Dickinson)

How do we stand on our own two feet when we don't know what shoes we should be wearing?

Developing the theme of alternative realities explored in The If Path (2003), Café Reason returned to the Pegasus Theatre in 2006 with a new performance, which considered issues of identity - the search for, avoidance, or acceptance of ourselves. Seven dancers set out on a journey in search of their perfect self, entering the enigmatic otherworld of butoh where even their relationship with the ground comes into question.

A collage of multi-layered motifs and images, including aerial work and underwater video, Precarious Footing employed the same innovative combination of choreography and improvisation, challenge and delicacy, mythic power and everyday resonance that has characterised Café Reason's work to date. They were joined on stage by members of Oxford Improvisers whose original, live music is created in direct response to the dance, and is equally risk-taking.

Who do you see in the mirror? The struggle into being as we take our first painful steps from oneness to individuality, and encounter The Other.

The defences we employ to protect ourselves become barriers, isolating us, creating a void in the centre of our being into which we disappear. Images surface of a different reality, an elusive memory of unity and ease.

Where are you, my love?
My lover, my twin, my self;
my brother, my father, my mother, my sister,
my dear friend, my perfect existence....
where are you who would make me whole?

Through the reflection of all our possible selves we break through into a new way of being. Are we now surefooted, earthbound, airborne?