Undertide is an exquisite, mesmerizing feast where subtle movements guide the dancers from within: It is the experience of living in a body and raises questions around the body’s vitality and how we experience life from the inside out.

“Undertide, by NZ/USA Minnesota-based directors of the BodyCartography Project Olive Bieringa and Otto Ramstad, is a sepia study of dynamic sustainment and a sustained study of intense confinement. Beginning as a film (director Alyx Duncan), seven dancers communally jostle for position within the confines of a box, viscerally. Bodies ripple, nerves jitter and energy flows successively like the blood within. A gory filmic moment reveals the viscera; the audience make uncomfortable noises. Morphing into real time, dancers slowly leave the box only to cling to each other as the empty box spins. Magic and trickery? Returning to the confines of the cube brings reversal and echoes through time. Ending with the dancers return to real time, planetary spinning leaves us in calm, contemplative absorption.”  – Dr Linda Ashley, theaterview.org.nz

“It’s like a Grecian frieze come to gradual life, each arrangement revealing more of the inner story. The pace is hypnotic, so the sudden appearance of a dark object on an exposed belly and its slow excavation by worm-like fingers is a shock.” – Bernadette Rae, NZ Herald

The two part work was created for Touch Compass Dance Company, New Zealand’s first and foremost inclusive dance company.