“Set on flooring a stage covered in black shiny flooring, the sides hung with similarly reflective fabric, “Furnace” offers absolutely no primal emotion and a great deal of sincere endeavor. It opens with Ms. Garnica moving very slowly with her back to the audience, shoulders slumped and feet turned in as the Beatles’ “Golden Slumbers” plays and replays. After a while, other dancers enter with the same minuscule steps; later they quiver as they cluster about a silver mannequin lying on the floor. The mannequin’s purpose is mysterious here, and it subsequently disappears, but to ask what it might mean is as pointless as questioning any of the other events in the piece. Four women have a chattering non-conversation, moving their heads with sharp, birdlike jerks; seven dancers walk randomly about the stage, before each in turn suddenly gasps, stiffens and falls into the arms of those nearby, who rush over to catch them. (It’s like those games of trust that team-building counselors force unwilling office workers to play.)
Then comes the nudity, with a lot of dappled lighting (by Miguel Valderrama) playing over bodies alternately crashing to the floor (you begin to worry about their knees) and quivering supine in the semi-dark. At the end, rather treacly piano music plays as they raise their legs and upper bodies into the air while remaining floor-bound.
Perhaps a metaphor of escape or transformation is intended, but despite the undoubted effort and focus of the dancers, there is no accrual of physical or psychological detail in “Furnace” that might reinforce that idea. Butoh is about stripping down to necessity; all here seems arbitrary.”
– Roslyn Sulcas, “From Tokyo, a Stripped – Down Movement Style”, The New York Times, 2009