Tension propels ‘Figninto’

A sense of the human body in violent rebellion against itself propels and unifies “Figninto,” a 55-minute abstract dance drama by the all-male Salia ni Seydou company at UCLA’s Freud Playhouse.

Formed seven years ago, the company includes three dancers and two musicians (one of whom briefly doubles as a dancer) from the African nation of Burkina Faso. At the opening Wednesday, they created a maelstrom of self-destructive energy: physicality hellbent on tearing itself apart.

Some of the remarkable tension in the work derives from the deliberately unresolved conflict between the hallmarks of traditional African dancing (galvanic unisons, complex rhythmic accompaniment) and contemporary Western dance-theater (anarchic solo anguish, long periods of silence).

That conflict might also be the theme of the piece, except that choreographer Seydou Boro (assisted by Salia Sanou) focuses much of it on the terrors of blindness, the act of feeling one’s way, and often falling, on a stage lighted only by a few lanterns. Eye-rubbing and covering the eyes also recur as motifs. And “Figninto” means “The Blind Man.”

Boro often serves as a kind of catalyst in the work. At one point, when Sanou and Ousseni Sako are sprawled on their backs, convulsively punching the air, a single touch from Boro initiates a period of calm. Sanou, however, functions as the protagonist: shadowed by Boro, confronted by Sako, but alone on the journey that ends the piece, a trip to nowhere along a pathway of sand.

Because “Figninto” remains intent on being visceral, not intellectual, thematic preoccupations frequently take a back seat to overwhelmingly forceful flailing. At such moments, Salia ni Seydou turns African dancing inside out. The traditional back-hinge of African technique, for example, no longer pumps out life-affirming exuberance but becomes a kind of pathological spasm -- a symptom of the body’s breakdown.

You can argue that the flailing goes on too long, and all the spliced-in handstands, lifts and other gymnastic ploys do not so much vary it as amount to a display of prowess and egotism.

Indeed, the flamboyant dancing compromises what seems an attempt to create an African equivalent of stark, neo-Expressionist Japanese butoh. And the sand-path section may well represent a conscious shift away from virtuosity toward a more focused expressivity.

But it’s too late. “Figninto” initially blows you away with its unsparing intensity. However, like that path, there’s a question of whether anyone knows where it’s heading.

Nor should the dancers force themselves to the brink of injury to keep us involved. The world, and the uses of male power, may be in crisis, but there’s room, on and off the dance floor, for humane solutions.

Drummer Dramane Diabate provides the pulse of the evening and joins a stamping dance midway through. Overamplification harms Irisso Tao’s flute excellence, but his mastery of the jaw harp adds delicacy to an event otherwise very, very short on it.

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‘Figninto’

Where: Freud Playhouse, UCLA, Westwood

When: Tonight and Saturday,

8 p.m.

Price: $15-$35

Contact: (310) 825-2101