1 - 7 November 2001
Issue No.558
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 1 - 7 November 2001 Issue No.558 |
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On the sea shore
David Blake admires tricks of the light
Tokyo Contemporary Dance 2001 (Japan) Main Hall, Cairo Opera House, Monday 22 October
All the way from Tokyo they came. And it was with what other dance companies leave out, which isn't much, that the dancers from Tokyo began. Dance theatre has taken bodies to where it's really quite rude to go any further, even if a body is, after all, just a body.
This performance is broken into three parts, like three acts of a play. Act I is about knitting. Knitting is forever. Pearl, stitch, pearl: you can knit a scarf that would reach to Minya and beyond.
It's a life line of sorts, this knitting your way to paradise. But don't, whatever you do, drop a stitch, for that means the end. And that is what the small lady who opens the programme, jammed up against the proscenium, is doing when it starts. She's lost her country, she's gone bonkers, with not a single stitch to save her. It's a cruel fate to be a lost stitch. And that's just about what this first show is about.
Everything on stage is lost in forbidden areas, recouped stitches from a world that is dissolving. Tsuyoshi Shirai and Yusuke Awazu have made a charade. It is fast moving, like an old black and white film, constantly changing. And the changes are of the type Laurel and Hardy turned into philosophy. There is nothing, merely a cruel shrug. On the set there are red chairs, four, three men and a girl. There is no comfort: the chairs buzz electrically as soon as anyone approaches them. And for relaxation there are two large reading chairs down stage with their own distinct personalities -- menace.
All the dancers in this part of the show are brilliant mimes. Poor, wretched lost stitches, they are so clever at what isn't there. They try to inform us about noninformation and succeed pathetically in showing that the loss has been ever present and so is no loss at all. Their faces express what cannot be danced and the dance has been abandoned. They are left as partly present ciphers of a batty politesse and delicacy of manner which becomes more affecting as you watch it.
Show II: an imaginary man has been invented by Mizuto Abura. This name means oil and water in Japanese. Do they mix? Yes, in this case the legend seems to have stepped aside to allow the dance theatre to make a point.
Maybe Sasaki, great master of the Institute of Japan Mime, has passed them some secrets known from the ancient days of Japanese theatre. Anyway they go much beyond the West with their movement and the manner in which they convey emotion. Our efforts, by comparison, are fleshy and obvious. This young show is the best of the three acts. It has a sure but nimble touch devoid of any technicalities. It is profound yet amusing, with the irony which pervades Japanese literature from the time of Genji and Shonagan. No matter what they do a certain grandeur comes even through their most hectic gyrations. They are ideo- symbolic dreamers of another existence -- but which one?
One dancer merely walks about dressed in black. There is a lot of black in this performance but it has nothing to do with the black the West drapes around death. This black is to do with eminence, black is the most impressive shade of all in this short act, and they use it because it lends a tremendous impression to the signs they give of the grand obliteration.
From the man walking through the gloom lost in his false stories a waltz of sorts begins and on the third beat the tone curdles beautifully into the rackety grind of a pianola. Sad, lost and unbefriended, we lost the pianola as an instrument last century, perhaps because it surpasses even the saxophone in expressing loneliness. It wanders on like a man defeated but full of purpose. From away over the hills of somewhere comes the pianola with a cracked and lacerated heart.
This act dazzlingly captured an impossible -- that of Conlan Nancarrow when his temper's up and things are bad but there is music and even the rancid honk of a passing bus will do.
Act III Title: Harimao. After two acts of black this third begins with total colour, inky, deep, oceanic black but of such power it lifts us above and makes the rest of the work an undercurrent. The colours are velvety, not bright or décor like. Tall, dusky, a marine-toned blue moves around like a crab stranded by the receding tide. Abandoned, he lost his water and lost his mind. They'll boil him, tin him, and export him. His simple crabdom, even his creature activity, has melted away with the tide.
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