Contemporary Dance Showcase
Phase 2: Japan + East Asia
Kingyo, UBIN Dance, Sun-Shier Dance Theatre, Makotocluv, Yun Myung Fee
Japan Society, New York
January 12, 2008
by Tom Phillips
copyright 2008 by Tom Phillips
If there was a theme to Japan Society’s 11th annual Contemporary Dance Workshop, it might have been the insane influence of western civilization in Japan and East Asia. The five-company program was dominated by robotic, spastic movements that seemed to be driven not by the person but by the “machine” outside. The takes on this ranged from the wildly desperate – an extended solo meltdown by Yun Myung Fee – to the wildly comic, in the best piece of the night by the Japanese group Makotocluv. 
This group of four men and one woman likes to perform in the streets of Japan’s big cities, and much of its vocabulary comes from the bustling masses there. “Nipponia Nippon” seems to be a satire on both the excessive formalism and the undue haste that mark the westernized, bastardized culture of present-day Japan. It’s a Chaplinesque street scene centered on a disoriented, increasingly disheveled businessman, surrounded by bouncing, spinning, grunting cogs in the machine. At one point, two men in suits engage in an elaborate tai-chi contest over a scrap of paper. In the end, the whole company goes bouncing across the stage, spewing business cards in the air like confetti.
With the showcase expanded this year to include include groups from elsewhere in East Asia, Taiwan’s Sun-Shier Dance Theatre offered a different look: a meditation on female psychology under the tyranny of western fashion and body-consciousness. Six women dance surrounded by glass or plastic panels that serve as windows, doors, and above all mirrors. “Inside Out” centers on a lone woman haunted by her reflection and her projected body-image; she is stalked by it, alters it, struggles with it, dances around it, gives up on it, and finally armors herself in falsies, shades, and a scarf – only to walk out into the world and confront multiple other women in identical armor. The piece was grim, but passionately and fluidly danced by the company of six women. And it was lightened by an interlude with three girls in flower costumes, hiding behind and then jumping out from behind skirts made of mirrors. 
On the whole this showcase didn’t have quite the energy and technical verve that it had in the last few years. The two opening acts looked not quite ready for prime time. But Japan Society's artistic director Yoko Shioya can always be relied on to serve up something new, with spicy ingredients: cultural commentary, artistic grace, and humor.
copyright 2008 by Tom Phillips
