When you see a woman doing what she’s always been doing, what she’s been taught to do ever since she was a little girl…What do you see? If you see her do the same thing from a different angle and time-space…do you see the same woman?

“Ice Water” is a Butoh Dance Performance about female sensuality and her relationship to her own sensuality – including feelings of guilt, shame and fear. Butoh is an expressive, emotive and experimental dance that originated in Japan during the World War II as a protest against many things. Butoh has confronted taboo topics like pain, grief, death, suffering and even sexuality – all the topics that society would like to gloss over. “Ice Water” explores a woman’s sensuality – her pleasure for movement and the simplest things in life, like the way the wind feels on her skin and blowing through her hair, or the feel of water as she washes her hands and feet. A woman’s sensuality is often always linked to her sexuality – even if she’s not intending to be sexual. Due to uncomfortable feelings this sensuality evokes in others – such as jealousy, lust, even “provoking” violent feelings within others, to the point where they wish to suppress her or worst – “steal” it from her through force…

Performance and Concept: Alyssa Marie Warncke
Music: Dmitriy Lipilin
With: Alyssa Marie Warncke and Dmitriy Lipilin
Dramaturgy: John Andrew Cunnington, David Patrick Delves, Tricia Nguyen, Ilse Zoerb
Premier: 14 December 2019 – Lang Thang, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

All photos by Maxwell Gutteridge (2019)