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Hot on the heels of winning the Kyknet Fiesta Award for Best Dance Production 2014 for SKOONVELD, Underground Dance Theatre returns to the National Arts Festival Fringe with BOK. BOK has Underground Dance Theatre re-imagining Vaslav Nijinsky’s iconic ballet AFTERNOON OF A FAUN.
Choreographers Steven van Wyk, Cilna Katzke and Kristina Johnstone use the lens of contemporary South Africa to revisit this infamous ballet that revolutionised dance and shocked its first audiences in 1912 with its erotic innuendos. Underground Dance Theatre stands for both innovation and artistic excellence. A major landmark in dance history, this reimagining aims to captivate audiences with thought-provoking images.
Set in a mythical, dream-like world where forms shift and reality is questioned, BOK explores the fluidity between the primitive and the civilised, the human and the animal. Underneath the beauty of a surreal fantasy, we see a distorted reflection of contemporary South Africa.
Featuring an all-star, all-male cast including acclaimed performer Henk Opperman (QUEEN AT THE BALLET), William Constable (SO YOU THINK YOU CAN DANCE?), Aviwe November and Martin Harding (Cape Dance Company), with costume designs by 2014 Fleur du Cap nominee Marcel Meyer (THE MILK TRAIN DOESN’T STOP HERE ANYMORE and A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM), BOK is a seductive visual feast charged with an atmosphere of palpable threat, heightened eroticism and dangerous beauty.
Formed in 2010, Underground Dance Theatre has steadily been gaining acclaim. The company’s debut production at the NAF in 2012, KEEPSAKE MINUS 3 (co-produced with 2014 Standard Bank Young Artist for Dance, Nicola Elliott) received a Standard Bank Ovation Award and won the 2013 Kyknet Fiesta Award for Best Dance Production. This success continued when in 2013, the company’s production PLASTICwas also the recipient of a Standard Bank Ovation Award and the work SKOONVELD was awarded a Standard Bank Special Silver Ovation as well as the 2014 Kyknet Fiesta Award. Underground Dance Theatre has also appeared at Dance Transmissions Festival in Uganda, the Baxter Dance Festival, and the Klein Karoo Nasionale Kunstefees.
BOK will be presented at PJ’s at the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown, for eight shows only from 7 – 12 July 2014. Tickets cost R80 and bookings can be made at the National Arts Festival website: https://www.nationalartsfestival.co.za/events/bok/.