Multi award-winning Underground Dance Theatre tours their latest contemporary dance production LoveZero to Cape Town, Grahamstown and Bloemfontein.

LoveZero is a contemporary dance double-bill made up of Mode (choreographed by Steven van Wyk and Thalia Laric) and Cipher (choreographed by Cilna Katzke and Kristina Johnstone). It will appear on the Arena platform at the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown, the Youngblood Gallery in Cape Town, and the Vrystaat Kunstefees in Bloemfontein.

With two abstract dance works, LoveZero investigates the distance between memory and reason, emotion and logic.

Critically acclaimed Mode was commissioned by the Baxter Dance Festival 2014. Choreographers van Wyk and Laric were hand-picked by the Festival to create the coveted commissioned work for its tenth anniversary.

This choreographic duo won the 2014 Kyknet Fiesta for best dance or physical theatre production as well as a Special Silver Standard Bank Ovation Award in 2013 for their Voortrekker idyll Skoonveld.

Mode finds humour and aesthetic inspiration in the formal elements of social dances, from the processional rigidity of court dances, to the frivolity of the salsa. It is a dance about dancing, a half-forgotten recollection of dancing in church halls and ballrooms. Sophisticated to a point of heightened beauty and absurdity, Mode is an imaginary folk-dance for a people who never existed. Rhythms of first waltzes intertwine with ballet lessons, hip-hop classes and aerobics routines: an echo of memories both futuristic and nostalgic, a postcard from a fictional place.

Cipher is a new work choreographed by Cilna Katzke (Cape Town City Ballet; iKapa Dance Theatre) and Kristina Johnstone (Makerere University Kampala) and is a numbers game.

Numbers seem rational, logical and impersonal, yet we seem to be deeply attuned to how numbers feel. There are favourite numbers, lucky numbers, mystical numbers… Cipher explores the human inclination to ascribe emotion to that which seems obscenely rational. The dance navigates the tension between order and disorder, harmony and anarchy, the logical and the illogical.

LoveZero’s cast includes Henk Opperman (winner of Kyknet’s reality show Dans! Dans! Dans!, Freddie Mercury in Bovim Ballet’s Queen at the Ballet) and showcases the vocal talents of soprano Robin Botha (Fleur du Cap winner for best actress in a musical for her role as Christine in the Phantom of the Opera, most recently seen in Cape Town Opera’s Showboat).

Underground Dance Theatre has previously collaborated with Nicola Elliott (Standard Bank Young Artist for Dance 2014) on Keepsake Minus 3, a production which garnered them a Standard Bank Ovation Award, as well as the 2013 Kyknet Fiesta for best dance production. LoveZero builds on the company’s reputation for producing work that aims for artistic excellence and that is both thought-provoking and entertaining.

There will be a preview of LoveZero on Saturday, July 4 at the Youngblood Gallery, 70-72 Bree Street, Cape Town. Tickets are R50 available by phoning 021 424 0074.

At the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown, LoveZero is on at Graeme College on July 6 at 12 pm and 7 pm, July 7 at 3.30 pm and 9.30 pm, and July 8 at 12 pm and 5.30 pm. Tickets are R70 available at www.nationalartsfestival.co.za

At Vrystaat Kunstefees LoveZero is on at The Civic Theatre in Bloemfontein on July 13 at 4.30 pm, and July14 at 4 pm. Tickets are R90 at Computicket.