How then to navigate this phantasmagoria, and emerge unscathed? By facing the challenges head-on. Henry, now freed from the ropes, pushes forward, one delicate step at a time. The butoh sequences seem highly apposite for the tearing down of walls and the rebuilding of a new world. Only butoh effectively demonstrates the duality of human nature. Butoh, all sharp contours, contorted and intense, is capricious by definition: it rejects the rigidity of restraint. And so Henry, with the fluidity of ritualized yet shapeshifting movement, back arched but head aloft, ascends through rough terrain. His hands are elegantly raised but spiky as tendrils. He is primed in readiness for self defence, ready to pounce.

He finds his way towards a black horse, and both man and beast undulate together gracefully, swinging with metronomic precision. As horses feature in Buddhism and Christianity, it's not hard to draw a through line to the symbolism of power, humans interacting with totemic beasts. 

So what of the exit? Once able to communicate with a noble beast, the pathway is clearer. The nightmare becomes a lucid dream, and Henry's escapologist now has agency. A flower bursts into life, reminding the viewer of the endurance of nature, which always somehow finds its way through the cracks.  Visionary and poet William Blake once wrote, “To see the world in a grain of sand / And a heaven in a wildflower” in his “Auguries of Innocence.” Perhaps this is after all the resilience of the human spirit, the sense of time, place and endurance, mirrored by the movement of human bodies in dance, a dance of hope, strength of will, and transcendence. All we can hope for as humans is a soft landing upon reaching the other side.