Resonant VOID ****

Butoh, says performer Joanna Rosenfeld, is somewhere in between dance and physical theatre. The dance it practices is a dance of darkness, a dance of death. Integral to the post-war Japanese artistic conversation, Butoh emerged from the pain of a traumatised society, yet it is far more than simply harrowing. It is a medium that can be equally sublime and grotesque, sometimes flitting between these two poles in the same sequence. 

Joanna Rosenfeld's Resonant VOID is a Butoh performance of tidal violence. She stretches her arms in agony, her body naked, desperate to be born. She plays one of Butoh's many masks whilst suffocating herself through a sheet of plastic. She has the sea, the wind, the forest projected onto her body and her surroundings. She destroys everything, with rage, with precision; she slams a sheet against the ground over and over, always with somehow more intensity, and yet she smiles in her bucket speech. This is an hour which lingers in the mind. 

It lingers, but it only enthrals in peaks and troughs. I'm not saying this as a criticism – more an observation. This is a slow drink of a performance — it's all in the aftertaste. Live, you may lull with it, you may begin to daydream — although Rosenfeld knows exactly how and when to bring everyone back to earth. This is perhaps one of the most interesting things about Resonant VOID. This is a piece executed with a shocking precision. You'll never forget the images that matter, nor the feeling, which I relive as I write this.

The conception and design are immaculate, and Rosenfeld’s is an astonishingly vulnerable performance. Resonant VOID is a strange gem of a show – slightly outside the main hub of the Fringe in sunny Leith, but intimate, tidal and beautiful. A must see for fans of Butoh - urgent and haunting.

Diggers Pub,7 Bernard St. Leith until 30^th August.