DON’T do it. Mark Tatham (left), Daniel Geddes and a fragile orb.

AS YOU WALK into the theatre for this dance work, there’s a dangerous simmering of possibilities that unsettles you. It has to do with the set, which comprises a mountain of live matches and a lot of inflammable material. You might consider this to be obvious in a work entitled Burn, but it’s so blatant that it is not obvious, balancing possibility with prescience. Your fear, of course, is that the whole theatre will go up in violent flames, with one false move. But what does happen is even more powerful.

Enter Mark Tatham opposite Daniel Geddes and the work takes on a narrative sequence that on one level is about making fire in a storm. On another, it is about the relationship between man and earth, and on yet another, it is about the give and take in any relationship, which is physical and kind as it is furious and destructive.

Tatham and Geddes push the limits of their bodies in contradistinction with the pull of gravity. It’s a work that is about breathing life into the inanimate, and it touches on Frankenstein metaphors as it forces the performers into torsion and tension you will find difficult to get your head around. It’s tightly formed, choreographed with supreme intelligence and structured around hairpin bends in the sequence of events that will hold your focus utterly. But above all else, it is noble in its symmetry and the splaying of possibility. Burn comprises gestures of blowing, metaphors of burning, nuances of destruction and loops of creativity that will make you think of Adam being created by God in a gust of air, as it makes you understand the horror of breathlessness and the magic of life.

In short, it’s a tremendous privilege to see these two dancers, different in their physicality, but utterly focused in the sense of self, creating a landscape of metaphorical and narrative possibilities that not only reaches to the outer threads of environmentalist issues, but also reaches into the very interstices of what it takes to be human. You will only realise how breathless the work makes you when you leave the theatre. A dance work which redefines vulnerable flawlessness. Beautifully.

• Burn is choreographed and directed by Bailey Snyman and performed by Daniel Geddes and Mark Tatham at the Downstairs Theatre on July 22 and 23, as part of the Wits 969 Festival. Visit webtickets.co.za or visit Wits 969 on facebook.