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Yumi Umiamare ... one of Melbourne’s most phenomenal performers.

POSTED: 27 JUNE 2009

Yumi Umiamare's butoh-inspired vision of duality*

Spirit-raising yet viscerally physical, En Trance, the world premiere of a butoh-inspired solo dance piece by Melbourne artist Yumi Umiamare, promises to be a metaphysical night in the Malthouse Theatre.

Counterbalanced by the purity of digital painting produced live with collaborating artists Bambang Nurcahyadi and Naomi Ota, Yumi is entranced.

Tongue flailing, her rolled-back eyes become the bifurcated lens through which we are invited to a full view of the duality of existence ... the duality of Yumi’s cultural life, split between her native Tokyo and her adopted home Melbourne ... the duality of beauty and darkness, life and death, physicality and ethereality.

Since coming to Melbourne with one of Japan’s oldest Butoh performance troupes, DaiRakudakan, for the 1990 Melbourne International Arts Festival, Yumi has become one of Melbourne’s most phenomenal performers, her skills in demand the world over.

After her many performances of The Burlesque Hour around Australia, in En Trance she continues her fruitful collaboration with Moira Finucane, who acts as dramaturg.

This will be the second time Yumi has performed in the Tower Theatre, following Malthouse Theatre’s presentation of DasShoku Hora in 2005.

Wild and serene, decadent and divine, butoh performance is charged with the energy of creation and destruction. In En Trance these disparate forces come together in a series of sequences that redefine the phrase ‘high energy’.

En Trance will be performed in the Tower Theatre, The CUB Malthouse, Southbank, Melbourne, from 28 August to 13 September.

*Based on media release issued by Malthouse Theatre.