Japanese butoh dance company Sankai Juku was founded in 1975. They’ve been an international touring company since 1980, and this week brought them to Melbourne for the first time. Their show Kagemi (Beyond the Metaphors of Mirrors) was undoubtedly one of the must-see events of this year’s MIAF, and there was a capacity audience in the State Theatre for this performance.
The stage was almost devoid of props, save for a garden of long-stemmed white paper lotuses in the centre of the stage. At the beginning of the performance, Sankai Juku director Ushio Amagatsu appeared and performed a slow introductory movement near the edge of the stage. The plants then rose slowly into the air (where they remained until descending once more at the close of the show), revealing the remaining dancers lying on the stage.
The number seven played a significant part in the symbolism and symmetry of the piece. Kagemi was divided into seven movements, and the Sankai Juku performers numbered seven, although they were rarely all on stage at the same time, more often appearing in subsets of six, five, four or three.
Despite the lack of props, an ethereal, other-worldly atmosphere was conjured by the slow, restrained movements and white body make-up of the performers. (I hesitate to use the term ‘dancer’ because ‘dance’ just doesn’t seem like an adequate description of what these guys do – this is movement as martial art or profound spiritual practice.)
The recorded musical soundtrack was written and performed by Takashi Kako and Yoichiro Yoshikawa (and was issued on CD in Japan back in 2001), and consisted of numerous different moods – ranging from Debussy-esque romantic piano, to sweeping synth strings, to plucked ethnic textures, to industrial guitar feedback. The music and beautifully crafted lighting effects all helped to heighten the mood of something alien and strange. At times I was reminded of such sci-fi films as The Man Who Fell to Earth and Dune. The bald-headed performers looked a little like Newton in The Man Who Fell to Earth (and at one point the music even sounded uncannily like ‘Subterraneans’ from Bowie’s Low) and some of the lighting effects made the stage look like the landscape of the planet Arrakis in Dune.
Ushio Amagatsu has said: ‘Though we cannot share the pains of others’ bodies, of the body itself, souls can find sympathetic resonance, reverberate with each other, and in doing so create a bridge.’ The lengthy ovation received by Sankai Juku at the end of the performance would indicate that more than a few bridges were built last night.
View a grainy video clip (of dubious legality) of the same show, performed in Portugal earlier this year, on YouTube here
Ewan Burke
