After successful seasons at KKNK 2015 and The Magnet Theatre, Underground Dance Theatre’s provocative BOK returns to the National Arts Festival.

BOK has the multi award-winning dance company re-imagining Vaslav Nijinsky’s iconic ballet Afternoon of a Faun. Choreographers Steven van Wyk, Cilna Katzke and Kristina Johnstone use the lens of contemporary South Africa to revisit this infamous ballet that revolutionised dance and shocked its first audiences in 1912 with its erotic innuendos.

Set in a mythical, dream-like world where forms shift and reality is questioned, BOK explores the fluidity between the primitive and the civilised, the human and the animal. Underneath the beauty of a surreal fantasy, we see a distorted reflection of contemporary South Africa.

Featuring an all-male cast including acclaimed performer Henk Opperman (Queen at the Ballet; winner of Kyknet’s Dans! Dans! Dans!), Sherwin Rhode (Vuyani Dance Theatre, Darkroom Contemporary), Kopano Maroga (featured in Standard Bank Young Artist for Dance 2014 Nicola Elliot’s Chalk), BOK was noted as one of the top six dance productions in South Africa of 2014 (Robin Malan, BroadwayWorld.com).

With a score recomposed by Heno Janse van rensburg (of SA band aKing) and costume designs by Fleur du Cap 2014 nominee Marcel Meyer (The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore; Midsummer Night’s Dream), BOK is a seductive visual and aural feast charged with an atmosphere of palpable threat, heightened eroticism and dangerous beauty.

BOK will be performed at Centenary Hall at the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown at 10 am on July 9, at 12 noon and 6 pm on July 10, at 2 pm on July 11 and at 10 am on July 12. Tickets are R90 at www.nationalartsfestival.co.za