Inspired Absurdity from Japan
Dairakudakan June 27 Yerba Buena Center for the
Arts
reviewed by Rita Felciano
Thanks to the efforts of the yearly San Francisco Butoh
Festival (1995-2002) the Bay Area has built a considerable
appetite for this Japan-born dance form. So it should
have come as no particular surprise that audiences in
late June packed the Yerba Buena Center's Forum theater
for Dairakudakan, a thirty-year old Butoh group from
Japan. The only surprise was that this extraordinarily
skilled, theatrically savvy and at times hilariously
funny troupe made its first US appearance only two years
ago.
The company is still under the artistic leadership of
founding director Akaji Maro who started his career
studying and performing with Butoh founder Tatsumi Hijikata.
Like no other Butoh company that has performed in the
Bay Area—Koichi Tamano's Harupin Ha in Berkeley comes
the closest—the kinship between those two artists was
visible. Dairakudakan excavates sub-conscious and primal
impulses in a way that may speak more directly to Japanese
audiences but ultimately they go beyond cultural specificity
in addressing such broad human issues as generation,
identity and change. Sometimes they do it subversively,
sometimes with broad strokes, sometimes with the proverbial
twinkle in their heavily made-up eyes. Few companies
perform with the kind of ingrained sense of the absurd
that seems to be Dairakudakan signature stance.
Company choreographer Kumotaro Mukai's Kochuten:
Paradise in a Jar, was a disciplined, tightly structured
extravaganza of non-sequiturs that those lucky enough
to have been in attendance are not likely to forget
very soon. It was a show as non-sensical as it was creepy,
full of imagery that its performers yanked out of context
with the greatest of glee, constantly setting up expectations
only to undercut them. Not least of Kochuten's accomplishments
was a smart use of music which ranged from Euro-pop
to avantgarde classical to Bob Marley to movie favorites.
Kochuten's seven scenes smoothly flowed into each other
with the last one circling back to the beginning. "Portrait
of a family" opened in an atmosphere of beatific idiocy
as snow-like confetti rained on a group of grinning
dancers. After the performance an acquaintance said
that the cherry blossom season in Japan is a period
of extended merrymaking, including, as she put it, "a
great deal of drunkenness." So maybe the confetti, accompanied
by Andrea Bocelli and Sarah Brightman's pop hit "Quando
sono sola" (Time to Say Goodbye) was meant to suggest
those heady days of spring. It may explain why a Pietà
configuration ended with a kiss of the "son" who promptly
resurrected himself to join his now grumpy sobered-up
companions. The idea of re-generation may have also
parented the following scene in which the dancers, at
first in catatonic poses slowly came to life, first
by maybe twitching a finger or lifting an eyebrow until
their whole bodies twisted and shook and one of dancer
began to engage in a prolonged humping of an unseen
partner. That latter became almost unbearable to watch,
not because of its sexually explicit nature but because
it suggested unremitting, involuntary struggle. Gyorgy
Ligeti's ominous choral score, familiar from Kubrick's
"2001 Space Odyssey", didn't exactly dispel that notion.
But not all of Kochuten was as densely layered.
Sections of the solo "A tea table and a man" demanded a
juggler's deftness to metamorphose a little round table into a
protective cover, an athlete's discus, a globe of the world
and a hat among others. At first the disk seemed to roll
across the floor independently, then gradually fingers emerged
on the side; finally a frightened head popped up only to
immediately disappear. Deeply stooped over and carrying it on
his back, the dancer at one point uncannily looked like one of
those tiny beast of burden farmers in Japanese
paintings.
The most extraordinary scenes, "At the Harbor of the
River Styx" and "On the Sandbank" were both hilarious and
chilling. To the sound of children laughing and playing, a
Cerberus-type figure, decorated with Christmas tree lights who
called himself Godzilla, beat haplessly lost creatures towards
the back of the stage. Then one by one they re-emerged and put
their manhood onto a scale to be evaluated by a crouching
judge, in a woman's slip of all things. Screaming at the top
of their voices, each of them sliced into pieces a
strategically placed sausage. For the rest of the performance
these ten now naked men appeared sexless. The impact, however,
outrageously made, was striking. These dancers were not women,
nor were they clearly identifiable men. So what kind of sub
human were these genderless beings that floated across the
stage, bumping into each other, babbling in a heap unable to
even to use their hands and finally playing a game follow-the
leader who made locomotive noises and had burning incense
sticks glued to his skin?
Just before the choke-hold finale in which the dancers
backed into opening scene like a film in reverse, Kochuten
took on Hollywood. The dancers on their bellies, chin cupped
in their hands, looked like kids spread on the floor to watch
TV. Two of them in best Karaoke style mouthed Doris Day's
mother and son duet of "Que sera, sera" from "The Man Who Knew
too Much." It was a moment of pure theater, delicious in its
mocking naivete but also maybe an answer to some of the
questions this remarkable show raised: "What will be, will
be."
copyright 2003 by Rita Felciano
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