Before the Cherries Blossom

Noism08 “Nina”; Sankai Juku “The Kumquat Seed”; Akira Kasai “Pollen Revolution”
Japan! Culture & Hyper Culture
The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts
Washington, DC
February 2008

by George Jackson
copyright 2008 by George Jackson

Winter winds stir the stark branches. Washington’s cherry trees are wagging a thousand fingers as if to ask why Kennedy Center couldn’t have waited a few weeks until transplanted nature too would celebrate Japan. The only hint of an answer is that February was computer chosen as the most opportune month for the Japan festival. Such reliance on artificial intelligence seems apt. If there is a theme running thru the displays of lacquer sculptures, folding screens, costume fashions, flower transparencies, highway photographs, bamboo constructs, pearled jewelry and lifelike machinery, and furthermore if this supposed theme also imbues the festival’s lectures, workshops and performances – it seems to be that culture and nature interact unpredictably. The festival’s strong dance bias isn’t as surprising as its subtext: the art’s future lies in its details today. These included the blinking eyes of the robot Geisha on display in the Hall of States as it refused to answer a patron because the question asked wasn’t original enough, or the only waist-high upright arabesques allowed in the venerable and Western “Raymonda” as performed by Tokyo’s New National Theatre Ballet. Little things, alongside big ideas and lasting images, were notable too in the three modern/post-modern dance presentations I’m commenting on.   

Noism raises the technical bar for modern dance. This company is superbly trained. It functions as an ensemble when that’s called for, but each of the dancers is a distinct individual, fully at home in a unique body. Differences among the 10, whether of gender or articulation, are diminished or stressed as needed. In “Nina – materialize sacrifice” (Terrace Theater, February 7) the company employs different degrees and sorts of flexibility, speed and strength. There is also the chance to imitate, subtlely, different styles from mechanical dance to hip hop to ballet.

Choreographed by company founder and director Jo Kanamori, “Nina” is about humans and artificial humans – dolls, robots, lifelike machines - and their hybrids. Undoubtedly this 85 minute, continuous work stems from Japan’s fixation on “robotopia” but Western eyes will recognize notions from E.T.A. Hoffmann’s tales through the Capek brothers’ “R.U.R.” to Isaac Asimov’s opus and Stephen Baxter’s fiction. Questions are raised, such as whether humans can command robots without loosing their souls. Answers come in the form of movement drawn from “Coppelia”, a Balanchine ballet and nature. 

Kanamori, who studied at Bejart’s Rudra school in Lausanne, is theatrical in handling the literary and dance allusions. He shifts gears seamlessly and is skilled in selecting just the right details in order to bring new images into focus. Doll dance styles did dominate though, and eventually I wanted to see Noism’s fine technicians in a broader, freer range of dancing.

Sankai Juku (Opera House, February 12) is easy to love or hate. Like the “total” operas of Richard Wagner, the “butoh” pantomimes of Sankai Juku company director Ushio Amagatsu split the audience. Both camps admire the high craftsmanship of Amagatsu’s presentations. These luxuriate in simplicity. The lighting glows. Textures emanate from the stage - the feel of sets, costumes and even the performers’ skins touches and penetrates the viewer. Actions are clearly, dazzlingly calibrated. The meaning, though, demands audience input. What is one to make of the current production – “Kinkan Shonen” or “The Kumquat Seed”- whose 7 scenes take 100 minutes and seem to add up to the course of a life? Or, is it several lives? Does the schoolboy shown at the start become the crazy or holy old man of the end? Does he experience what happens in between or only observe it? Is the reason that only men are on stage a religious, monastic choice or a sexual predilection? Is there free will or is human life as environmentally determined as the sprouting of a plant seed?  Amagatsu isn’t a traditional story teller who connects images motivationally, through cause and effect. Making connections is your job or your addiction.

Those who love Sankai Juku can loose themselves in its process - how an often repeated gesture, step or facial expression changes or stays the same. They find the content infinitely rich. They see Amagatsu holding up the enlarging mirror to nature. Those who hate Sankai Juku have grown impatient with the action’s predominant slow motion and wish they had a fast forward button.  They suspect that beyond the exquisite detail too little happens from start to stop that has inherent meaning. They protest that life isn’t like a Sankai Juku production although Amagatsu wishes it were and tries to dictate to reality, making life a ritual and turning art into cult. I’d like to know what sort of class and vows the six company members take.

Concluding the Japan festival was Akira Kasai’s solo event, “Pollen Revolution” (Terrace Theater, February 17). Kasai was self indulgent. What came across after more than an hour and a half was this clown dancer’s need for audience attention and his reluctance to leave the stage. He started with relative restraint, spinning out a dance about personal sensitivity. Dressed in traditional Japanese female fashion, he was perhaps a Geisha figure and was beautifully groomed except for the time touched face. Just a hint of irony hovered about this look back into history, but the dance went on too long without evolving. For our second whiff of “Pollen”, Kasai was dressed in close fitting black. The figure he cut was gender neutral. Bars of light on the floor suggested a prison cell. Doing some of the same motions as in first dance, Kasai’s delivery was now wild and expressionist. After he exited, the stage lights remained bright and the audience, believing the end had come, applauded. However, our soloist returned not for a curtain call but, dressed in white clown-like attire, to act up and interact with the audience. Kasai really didn’t seem to now how to end his act. And yet, the first image he fashioned – the ever so human Geisha figure experiencing feelings - will last. Alongside it will be that of the Geisha robot on display downstairs, as it blinks its eyes every few seconds.