Dance performance in five sections

The play starts with humour. Bare feet and calves touch in sharly-defined rays of lights, hug each other, and form erotic figures. Flat, rocky islands appear to float in an ocean. Suddenly a wild mayhem of fights, rivalry, appeal and rejection errupts between two slender female and three male dancers.

The contrasts create a harsh conflict of choreography. Semi-conscious, the relaxed bodies sway as in a dream through imaginary water. Wearing billowing, richly-decorated garmets, the members of the company concentrate on fascinating, ritual dances which allow a glimpse into an unknown, perhaps even forbidden realm of strange beauty and intensity. With violent movements battle the dancers a second time for dominance and submission.

The company’s name Bi Ma has its origin in the Chinese and hints at the grace and strength of wild horses. Three small-limbed Asians, one in relaxed aggression moving black dancer, and an ambitiously sports-minded European, form the ensemble which develops and compliments the national differences and characteristics in an amazing way.

The young and renown dancer and choreographer Pit Fong Loh hails from Malaysia and since 1984 she created thirteen successful choreographies. Together with her fellow countryman and dancer Ming Yam Low as co-founder, she started 1991 in Great Britain the by now already award-winning Bi Ma Dance Company. The foundations of the multifaceted company are rooted in the Chinese/Buddhist culture with its Asian gesture traditions, in the experience of classic European training, and in the contemporary western European schools.

»In Oriental style are we invited to take a step behind the noble surface and to focus our vision at a world in which our consciousness considers a groping life as something not completely human« (Hampstead & Highgate Express, London, 19.03.1993).