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The
Futuristic, the Freaky, the Glittering
Of Nipples and Other New Nipponese Dances
By Alissa Cardone
Copyright 2004 Alissa Cardone
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NEW YORK -- An impressive
range of work met an almost sold-out audience Friday, January 10
at the Japan Society, to open the seventh annual Showcase of Japanese
Contemporary Dance. Work of dramatically different character showed
contemporary dance from Japan that thrives in diverse manifestations
beyond its more celebrated and controversial Butoh form. The spectrum
of work addressed both intimate and collective concerns in five
unique movement styles.
She may be exploring
the absurdities of daily life in her work, but Un Yamada's choreography
is far from mundane. Her opening solo "Lock" unfolded as a witty
study of absolute boredom danced by neurotic hands on a small table.
In "sky/lark, " Yamada appeared to channel the futuristic cyber-soul
of Tokyo as well as its speed and intricacy in movements perfectly
timed to a soundscore by Tomomi Adachi. Lithe muscular arms carved
dense invisible schematics in the air, inscribing the inner workings
of some imaginary uber-machine. The choreography seemed to be framed
by limitations, as when Yamada spun, lunged and pivoted repeatedly
while keeping her arms locked in an upheld circle with fists pressed
together, before freezing for a long and engaging stillness.
The radically different
sense of Project Fukuru's work made me feel like I was in an episode
of "The Twilight Zone." "Ozma," a highly ritualistic multi-media
piece, featured tiny mechanical dolls that director Ishikawa Fukurow,
a kinetic artist and electrical engineer, incorporates into his
stage work in order, as he explains in a program note, to "materialize
his inner-self." Highly psychological, this epic chilled me -- it
wasn't just the delicately nightmarish tiny robot that dragged a
table across the stage or marched flat on its back while a dancer
read from a book, but the air of some ancient danger that perfumed
the darkly lit stage when the performer exhibited a surprising and
impressive round of Butoh-enhanced b-boy windmill, worms, and back
flips.
Odd unshapely movements
were coolly danced by Shigehiro Ide's Idevian Crew, who were dressed
in a palette of Western-style thrift fashion circa 1970, except
one central dancer wearing a kimono. In "Unreasonable Mme Belle,"
tensions played out between traditional and imported Western influence,
represented in the dance through various phrases constructed so
that someone would always be out of synch. The strongest group choreography
in the showcase, it seems that Shigehiro Ide's work aims to reveal
the irony in familiar human experience and invites the audience
to not just recognize it collectively, but take part in it. In one
poignant scene, the dancer in kimono invited the audience to clap
in time with another dancer who performed sit-ups until exhausted,
whereupon she collapsed.
The only thud in an
evening of echoes was Toru Shimazaki's "Dance Barbizon," aptly titled
considering its company of well-coiffed performers. The energetic,
highly committed and technically precise core of dancers could not
make up for relentless movement phrases that repeated so many times
they became numbing. A lack of variation in timing, use of space
and an elusive sense of drama also made the piece seem too long,
as I struggled to stay engaged with its blue sea-creaturely atmosphere
and 1980s-style costumes. Shimazaki's "River" was the most compliant
work of the evening, included most likely to represent a work which
owed itself to a more balletic lineage.
Works of such diverse
sensibilities do each other justice by being viewed together. The
successful choreographies were examples of clear artistic vision
in which the dance-making was not subservient to style, but style
was just a means to the end of conveying an impassioned idea. The
choreographers offered a unique quality which did not stray from
its core except to reveal the range of lights and darks that can
exist within a single state, such as boredom (for Yamada), metaphysical
contemplation (for Fukurow) or the irony in every day life (for
Idevian Crew). Even in the deepest moments, the pieces that drew
me into timeless trance and that made me think of life and death
and humanity in its most fragile or tragic circumstance were those
that maintained lightness and a sense of humor.
The one piece that was
able to engage without levity was Mika Kurosawa's "Diana/Actaion
for Pierre Klossowski." Kurusawa's striking costume, designed by
Kyoko Domoto, was alive on the body of a possessed spirit in this
solo, which premiered in 2003 at Judson Church. Ropes of decadent
jewels wrapped Kurusawa's neck and a single plastic breast with
a gorgeous ruby red gem on its gleaming nipple was tied across her
body like a shield over a tattered dress, as she skirted and half-Charlestoned
in between hard falls, landing face down flat. White powder, which
precipitated from her wildly teased out tresses, clouded the air
as the thickly inhabited atmosphere revealed the last dance of a
once bodacious burlesque star. Kurusawa's work operated in a process
of calculated revealing similar to strip-tease, in which she continuously
added new movements to illuminate her persona and then used her
highly practiced sense of improvisation to spontaneously cook them.
Whenever I see showcases,
I always wonder about the work that I'm not seeing, the work that
didn't make the curatorial cut. Although I was stimulated by this
program, it occurred to me that none of the works selected stretched
too far outside of my notion of what "contemporary" could be. So
I want to know: Who is the choreographer whose work is lying in
wait, tossed aside for the moment in a pile of declined proposals
for being too radical or too risky for 2004? Who didn't make the
cut?
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