"The Umbrella stage is free and psychiatrists are expensive, but the festival certainly hit rock bottom in every way with the sadly disgusting spectacle of stephen Cohen (sic). As he relies on attracting any kind of audience through producing crap on stage and through publicity generated through controversy, the less said about his personal hang-ups the better. But it would be interesting to see how many people would buy a seat to watch him if he actually hired his own theatre. "

"When Steven Cohen defecated on the stage during FNB Vita's Cape Town Dance Indaba in August last year, he caused a stink in more ways than one.

First, some poor sod had to clean up the mess; second, other dancers had to perform on the same stage, making his a hard act to follow. The sponsoring bank received letters of protest.

Sensitive to the damage an event like this might have on its image, FNB sent a directive to the Vita promoters: drop Cohen, or we will drop our subsidy of this dance event.

Cohen challenges every taboo: he sullied the Cape Town stage following criticism of his rollerblade ride in Johannesburg with a burning sparkler up his bum. Now he has done it again, only worse, at the Johannesburg Dance Umbrella.

As in Cape Town, this raises several thorny issues- of censorship, sponsorship andjust what constitutes a taboo in today's liberated society. Since Cohen's Cape Town performance, Vita hasfound itse@f in a difficult position.

No one in the world of the arts is keen on any form of censorship, especially with SA 's recent past in mind. However, Cohen's provocative action endangered several decades of hard work in arranging and maintaining sponsorship; it also threatened the platform afforded countless other emergent choreographers.

Faced with a conflict between censorship and sponsorship, between two principles - the indivisibility offreedom and the sacrifice ofthe individualfor the good of the majority - organisers took a pragmatic decision. They offered Cohen his own separate-but-equal venue when the show moved to Durban.

In theory, this was well and good. In practice, no suitable venue could be found in Durban, so Cohen staged a one-man protest, with tape gagging his mouth.

It was also made clear to him that acts of that kind would not be tolerated., he was told not to do it again.

Last week, during Johannesburg's annual Dance Umbrella, Cohen retaliated by going some degrees further with an onstage performance so disgusting that most critics have chosen not to describe his actions creating a cordon sanitaire, so to speak, and denying him the publicity he craves.

I did not see his performance. With advance warning of what might happen I decided not to attend.

There is a grudging respect for Cohen as an artist. His work is thoroughly conceptualised and executed, with fine attention to detail This won him the FNB Vita Award for Art in 1998.

Engaging in controversial issues like the politics of the body and grappling with his own gay, Jewish identity, Cohen raises the issues of contemporary taboos.

Explicit body performances are hardly novel, and his echo some of the anti-establishment exercises by mainly female performers in the 1970's. Wearing a Star of david as a head-dress, with a blond wig and a stocking mask could be seen as anti-Semitic, if he were not Jewish. And what about the prosthetic leg -just what is he saying about limbless people. Taboos are not constant. nat was considered outrageous a century ago is the norm today. Consider Victorian England, where ladies did not show an ankle, let alone a leg.

Less than 50 years ago Lady Chatterly's Lover was banned for obscenity; 20 years ago, people of different skin colours could not marry, have sex or live in the same neighbourhood in apartheid South Africa.

Today, on any day of the week, television stations carry obscene language, graphic sex and mindless violence that would have warranted an X rating not long ago.

Cohen has a certain cult status and a voyeuristic following eager to see what outrageous act he will commit next.

For now, Cohen's actions are - in public, at any rate - unacceptable. Like a child seeking attention, he may have gone toofar this time and alienated even erstwhile supporters. He may well cry foul, but not many are prepared to defend his artistic license. No one wants to start banning artists. But when private sponsorship is becoming the main source of revenue for fringe and established artists, it would be sad if the future of many was endangered by the outlandish behavior of one ".

"Is Steven Cohen an exhibitionist sicko or is he a valuable South African artist exercising his constitutional right of freedom of expression? These are the questions dance audiences and radio listeners have been asking about this controversial performer".

"That singles Cohen out from anybody working on the South African stage today is his total committal to the no-holds-barred performance art movement of the 1960's and 1970's - with a millenium twist".

"Provocative, nauseating, unsettling, amazing, Limping Into the African Renaissance illicits these reactions and more. It is important to note that within an international context where Live Art and digital performance are becoming more frequent, Steven Cohen's bodyscape is not a freak show, but rather a valid socio-political artistic expression".

"Muzzled by a black phallus and handicapped by a prosthetic limb, the Performer hammers home his brilliantly articulate art and activism with brutal clarity ".

"There were plenty of artistic fireworks and more than a little controversy. Steven Cohen's Limping Into the African Renaissance, warning and all, was relatively well attended. This combination of acrobatics with a prosthetic limb, Nkosi Sikelel 'iAfrika, radical video and voice overs and Cohen drinking his own douche went to the heart of the identity crises facing many gay and straight South Africans, foreign immigrants and fearless artists.