Upon the arid desert of Namibia, a tribe of Bushmen dance around a bright wild fire. The men stamp their feet on the dry ground, creating beat and movement; while the women sing and clap, offering to the tribe an energy of life, health, and purpose with their moves. It is a dance of tribal spirit, a certainty like the rising and falling of the Moon. To the Bushmen, a lunar eclipse with its illusion of creation and destruction is part of it all; and so they continue to dance.

Nearby elephants, antelopes, and giraffes move, drink and sleep.

Among them all is Kathi von Koerber (a.k.a. Kaesha Kvk), a Butoh dancer from New York City. Kathi has traveled to South Africa to reconnect with her origins, and this is the first time in 16 years that she has returned. Not sure what her travels will yield, Kathi learns of a tribe, this tribe, of Bushmen in Namibia through a guide named Peter-Hain from the Herrero peoples of Namibia. It will be the first both Peter and Kathi will visit the North eastern Bushman land of Namibia, and the first time they will encounter this particular San tribe who live in the village of Dopost.

Kathi's intentions are pure: she wishes to experience and hopefully participate in dance. She does both. She learns about the traditional melon dance the women do daily. One woman will spin a melon and toss it behind her. The game requires sure hands since the melon will take unexpected bounces. If the woman behind drops the melon, a moment of chaos and laughter ensues, and the game resumes, a new song is sung. Later on Kathi joins the women and dances their tribal dance around the fire, while overhead the Moon spins it's course across the sky of light and shadow.

Tens of thousands of miles away, 45 years ago in Japan, another form of "tribal" dance emerged called Butoh dance. Butoh was initially a response to the death and destruction of Hiroshima. The idea was to dance like you have never danced before - to dance like the environment you are in. And so Butoh dance was an ugly, deformed and tragic improvisational dance. However, since it's origins, Butoh has moved into various directions. Some Butoh dancers reflect the inner turmoil or joy of the individual. Other Butoh dancers will dance as the environment, such as dancing an architectural dance of straight lines and walls within a building. Kathi comes from a school of Butoh called JINEN, developed by her teacher Atsushi Takenouchi. According to Takenouchi, the word JINEN expresses the wholeness of the universe, where there is no seperation between Man, Nature and God. JINEN is "to dance with the flow of the universe".

Previous Butoh performances by Kathi, both solo and duet with Takenouchi, have explored JINEN. In one dance, Takenouchi and Kathi lie buried in sand. It becomes apparent to the viewer that both dancers are not seen as "dancers" but as moving and interactive members of that sand. The sand comes alive as the two begin to dance the Nature that they are in. So the experience of Butoh for a dancer like Kathi is a spiritual connectedness with the environment, the self, and the Nature of things. Based on this, Kathi explains that Butoh and African tribal dance are actually quite similar, "When I look at these two, it's really one in the same. If all these Butoh dancers would go to Africa they would feel just as at home, as if an African dancer went to a Butoh ceremony...even when you look at African trance dance, it is an experience where they lose consciousness over what they are doing. For me Butoh is of that nature. You lose the ego and you go really deep inside and you let that move you."

On June 25th, Kathi will perform in New York City at the The Angel Orensanz Foundation for the Arts in the Lower East Side. That night Kathi will return to her experience of the dances of the Bushmen as well as her other journeys to tribes around the world. According to Kathi, "in terms of my explorations with these travels I feel like there is such a different meaning to all of this. It's a subconscious drive that is making me want to connect all of these dances. It's not that I want to be a missionary and put it all in one pot...I feel like somewhere there is a dialogue between all of them and my dance is that dialogue. It is an unknown territory."

The piece will also be an improvisational duet with Kali Z. Fasteau, an experienced world musician. Through performing on various eclectic instruments, Kali Z. will offer to the improvisational dialogue her own interpretations of her world journeys. Kathi will dance to this, to her memories, and to an environment which contains projected photography from South Africa. As a projected photo of a giraffe looks upon her and the audience, Kathi will dance with this giraffe, as the giraffe, as herself, and as part of the space.

And it all returns to Space. On an evening in Namibia, where the moon travels across the space of the night, shining bright with life one moment, and in another an eclipse of it conveys destruction of that light, the notion of JINEN is strongly present. Kathi too will dance between celebration and destruction; between herself and an African habitat; and between Africa and the world.