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Volatile is when the dancing body in Conjunto di Nero pits itself against other theatrical elements.

Central to the stunning spectacle is the double and duplicitous relation between light and shadow, and its multiple affects in defining space, body and perspective.

But strip away the play with light and what stands is a dance of cruelty whose core is bisected by mind and flesh.

Everything bristles vulnerably, but there is not a weak moment. The limits of the dancing body are pushed and the perception of movement is questioned.

Do we dance first and think afterwards? Or think first and then dance? Perhaps we should think and dance at the same time?

Mining the gap between brain and brawn is what dance-makers Emio Greco and Pieter C. Scholtenhave been doing since 1996.

Created in 2001, Conjunto di Nero reveals their iconoclastic concern with bodies that oscillate between two poles: motion and stillness.

Greco and five dancers splay sideways, scoop, skulk and tic about. They flail their arms, hanging them in mid-air. Their legs scurry en-pointe at double-speed and sink into deep elongations.

Amid frenzy, they lurch in taut and tenuous poses, breathing deeply to adjust or stretch an extra inch. They slip hints of a mind deliberating on the next move.

Searing with balletic verve, primordial and idiosyncratic, they mirror, plot, shadow and eclipse one another’s presence.

They limn a dance where the body - flexed to its extremity - is the visionary seeking to transcend its own corporeality.

Under Greco and Scholten’s razor direction, the moving body image is amplified and flattened in depth and density. Details and contours burn into the spectator’s vision.

Sheets of light and shadow sculpt the body such that its concrete mass appears suspended on the bare stage, weightless in thick air and dust.

Picked out in silhouette, the texture of their calf-length woven dresses, their exposed heads and limbs dissolve into intangible forms.

Blocks of silence and a soundscape - from soft crackle and drill-droning to Middle Eastern refrains - further dislocate place and time.

Conjunto di Nero bridges dance and discourse with such compelling analysis, integrity and sensual skill, that viewing it is a demanding experience, yet illuminating and highly pleasurable.

Cheers to the Singapore Arts Festival for continuing to support uncompromising frontier art