Corpus Null | AXIS
Corpus Null opened strong. A lone walker approached the audience, slow, barely moving at all. One by one, bodies emerged, running in figure eights, crashing into the walker’s line of sight, as if hit by an electric shock over and over again. It conjured up images of the daily grind, being lost among the chaos of the unrelenting rat race. I was distressed and captivated.
In the hour that followed, the AXIS ensemble took us on a journey through movement, creating patterns in the space with their bodies and transforming countless times. The moments I enjoyed the most were parts with strong symbolism. Underscored by a soundtrack of beeps and breaths, they sank into rhythms and repetitions of everyday movements. It felt medical and violent. Later, they marched and saluted stiffly with fixed faces, like a band of children playing soldiers, each action punctuated with a loud ‘ha’. These symbolic gestures referenced a wider context and invited me to make meaning.
As the show progressed, the message became less clear for me. True to the form of Butoh, the performers seemed engrossed in an internal world, responding to the ever-changing undulating musical landscape. At one point, a tech mishap left the performers dancing in silence and I felt this stillness only heightened the intensity of the dance.
AXIS chose not to use some of the common conventions of Butoh, such as shaving the head, rolling the eyes back, painting the body white, and performing near naked, all which serve to erase individual identity and highlight the way the body moves. Instead, the performers were dressed in a grey uniform and retained their individual nuances. The result made them seem like characters in our world, struggling as we struggle and feeling as we feel. Keeping their gaze offered us insight into how they felt about each change, however, their eyes sometimes betrayed them to look for a cue or check out the audience which I found distracting.
I was eager to see this show. I’ve never seen Butoh at this scale before. There are stacks of solo performers scattered throughout Australia with their own skills and flavours, but Corpus Null offered us a spectacle. I am impressed by the commitment and skill of the performers and I am interested to see how this show evolves.
