MY face, my identity: Steptext dancer Changik Oh is stretched. Photograph by Marianne Menke.

IF YOU PRICK me, will I bleed? They’re words which evoke the Jew in Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice, offering a glance into the hurtful and ghastly illogic of xenophobia. South African choreographer Gregory Maqoma and Austrian born Helge Letonja in a compelling collaboration take these words and push them further as they take three dancers each from Vuyani Dance Theatre and Steptext Dance Project, respectively, and play on the messy horror of the hypocrisy and hate that challenges our world right now.

It’s an astonishing piece of work backed by a spider-web-like set and placed in a soundscape that feels fit to break your head into shards, with all the sound tools of the trade, from that of gunfire and bombs detonating to techno-base sound that makes your teeth ring in your skull. It is in this space that these six performers dance with much more than their skeletal structure and musculature. They dance with their nerves and their intestines, with their souls stripped raw and their personal narratives exposed and splayed against other people’s values.

When you watch these dancers meld and coagulate with one another and the energy they magick into life on this otherwise bare stage, it feels as though some of these gestures and movements should be outlawed. They don’t seem possible – let alone legal or moral. This is the work of two very strong contemporary choreographers taking no prisoners. You will leave the space feeling assaulted in your sense of identity, your understanding of human possibility.

And, all things considered, you still cannot help but wonder what this work might have been like without the extra added element of the sound track, tough as it is. Indeed: the difficult and protest-driven nature of the work’s focus demands a sound that is explosive but the dance is so strong that it should have been given the chance to stand alone – and you, to be able to watch it without feeling you will be blasted out of earshot while you do so.

• Out of Joint is conceptualised and choreographed by Helge Letonja and Gregory Maqoma. It features creative input by Serge Weber (composition), Anke Euler (dramaturgy), Katja Fritzsche and Keaoleboga Seodigeng (costumes), Timo Reichenberger (lighting) and Helge Letonja and Julia Arroja da Silva (set). It is performed by Kossi Sebastien Aholou-Wokawui, Thulisile Princess Binda, Steven Chauke, Mariko Koh, Phumlani Mndebele and Changik Oh at The Fringe, Joburg Theatre complex until August 20, and then at the Jomba Contemporary Dance Festival in Durban on August 23 and 24. Visit vuyani.co.za or http://cca.ukzn.ac.za/index.php/jomba-home