Reviewed by Nadia Free­man

Pho­to cred­it: David Vagg

This is no typ­i­cal dance num­ber meant to dis­tract and delight you with sparkles and clap-along num­bers.  Lim­its sits in the realm of the­atre that is to chal­lenge its audi­ence and give them a chance to view what it might be like to step into the shoes of anoth­er per­son. Inspired by her own expe­ri­ence of invis­i­ble dis­abil­i­ty, Bon­nie Cur­tis explores ideas around per­ceived beau­ty and func­tion­al impair­ment in her show Lim­its.

The per­for­mance starts with an emp­ty stage and the Crea­ture (Bon­nie Cur­tis) upstage left, sit­ting at a van­i­ty.  The Crea­ture is try­ing to mas­ter the dif­fi­cult task of apply­ing lip­stick. A rit­u­al many women do in prepa­ra­tion to present them­selves to the world.

The per­for­mance takes us through the crea­ture’s explo­ration of them­selves and their body.  Walk­ing, gyrat­ing, writhing and work­ing out the fun­da­men­tals of every part of move­ment a body can make. Bon­nie is a for­mi­da­ble dancer and pur­sues the lim­its of move­ments through not just her body but fin­gers, toes and facial expres­sion, often con­tort­ing her face to demon­strate the very chal­lenge of being com­fort­able with­in one’s skin.

While this is pri­mar­i­ly a silent piece there is some speech as the crea­ture mut­ters to her­self about per­form­ing dif­fer­ent tasks and the record­ing of phras­es that are played, over and over again between ten­sion-build­ing audio design like the rumi­na­tion of some­one sink­ing into self-doubt.  Oth­er nar­ra­tive devices are used includ­ing the van­i­ty that is moved through­out the per­for­mance to new loca­tions, and it starts to feel that this is more than an object to look at one’s reflec­tion, but a bur­den as they labour to bring it with them through every scene.

Some of the scenes are per­haps longer than they need to be and may ben­e­fit from tran­si­tion­ing ear­li­er while oth­ers were quite mes­meris­ing includ­ing when the crea­ture sits on top of the van­i­ty down­stage with their back to the audi­ence and we can see the rip­ples of Bonnie’s back mov­ing and their reflec­tion in the mir­ror.  Oth­er scenes use icons of fem­i­nin­i­ty includ­ing bar­bie dolls, shoes and dress­es all of which the crea­ture strug­gles with and even­tu­al­ly finds its own way to fit.

Lim­its is show­ing at Te Aua­ha until Sat­ur­day 25th of Feb­ru­ary at 7.30 pm each night.  You can get your tick­ets through the Fringe Box Office.