The Preview [Tokyo] (Japanese only)

 

At the end of the year 2021, after running out of breath, my mind was buoyed by the fact that I had a free weekend for the first time in several months. I was in the middle of searching for a popular Korean drama on Japanese Netflix when I received a phone call. It was from Dr. Lee Jung-ho, who wanted me to go to Yokohama to see a performance.

The performance was called “DaBY (Dance Base Yokohama) Performing Arts Selection 2021” and was staged at the Kanagawa Arts Theatre (KAAT) in Yokohama from December 10 to 12 during the YPAM period. This performance was a public-private partnership project born from the complementary roles of the private residence house DaBY, which plans and operates a choreographer training program that opened in June 2020, and Aichi Arts Theatre. The project was initiated with the intention of linking creation and performance to provide opportunities for performing and reperforming works in Japan and abroad. The first two projects, “Dance Genealogy” in October and “Suzuki Ryu Triple Bill” in December, were presented at the Aichi Arts Theatre, and during YPAM, these two projects were combined with new works by Hashimoto Romance and Yamamichi Yae in a showcase performance.

 

Genealogy of Dance” by three of Japan’s leading female choreographers

I had the pleasure of seeing all of the productions of “Genealogy of Dance” over the course of two days and three performances. Let me start with the Genealogy of Dance. Three dance artists who have been active in the field as well as inheriting the philosophy of Fokin, Kilian, and Forsythe, who have renewed the history of ballet. The performance consisted of an original work that was the origin of their choreography and a new work that was the inheritance/reconstruction of their choreography.

The first ballet performance in Japan was the Flower Ballet, which celebrated the opening of the Imperial Theater, built in 1911 in Tokyo, in the neighborhood of the Imperial Palace. To promote opera and classical ballet, the following year the company invited G.V. Logie, an Italian dancer who had been active at the London Theater, but he did not take root well in Japan.
Later, Eliana Pavlova, who fled the chaos of the Russian Revolution and went into exile in 1919, performed at the Goethe Theater in Yokohama, and in 1927, she opened the first ballet school in Japan. And Anna Pavlova, who had formed a ballet company after the Russian Revolution and toured Asia, danced “The Dying Swan” 48 times at 10 theaters around Japan in 1922. Many Japanese were impressed by this beautiful performance. The famous novelist Ryunosuke Akutagawa also praised it highly. Then in 1936, Olga Sapphire (real name: Olga Pavlova) performed at the Japan Theater while teaching ballet. It can be said that these three Pavlova, who were Russian ballerinas in Japan, had a great influence on Japanese ballet.

Hana Sakai, from “The Dying Swan

 

The first piece I saw was Mikhail Fokin’s The Dying Swan. A cellist walked out and sat in a corner of the stage and began to play. I was again amazed to see Hana Sakai, one of Japan’s leading ballerinas, dance up close in a small theater, showing off her delicate back movements. Unlike Anna Pavlova, who appeared facing the audience, she gradually changed and began to show her back. I thought she was going to greet the audience beautifully and leave, but then two female staff members in black came out and showed her on stage preparing for the next piece by drinking water that was handed to her and correcting her costume while looking in the mirror. I thought they were going to dance again, but this time they began warming up. Swan Lake: The Truth of Its Death, directed/choreographed by Toshiki Okada, a playwright/novelist of note in Japan, had already begun. Finally, he began humming and dancing, approached the performers and explained the choreography, comparing the original work with the new one, saying that he had already foreseen his death in this part, and that he himself prefers this pose for the death scene. In the work, he does not clarify in words the cause of death, which was discovered by tearing open his own abdomen and dissecting it, but it seems like plastic trash discarded in the ocean. I had thought that there were many difficulties in making a contemporary version of a classical ballet, but this work, in the form of a one-person play in which she herself becomes a swan, thinking and dancing, was quite fresh.

Hana Sakai, “The Dying Swan: The True Story of Its Death

Next, Bene Nakamura, winner of the Professional Prize at the Prix de Lausanne (1988) and a member of the NDT, presented her new work BLACK ROOM and BLACK BIRD (2001), choreographed for her by Ily Kylián.

From “BLACK ROOM” by Benefit Nakamura

In “BLACK ROOM,” a square frame is illuminated by lighting like a path. Nakamura, dressed in a white mask and black costume, walks slowly along the rectangular path as if examining her own narration. As she says, “For me, the ‘black room’ is a tomb of words that have been buried without being spoken, and at the same time I think of it as a womb where someone who remembers those words resides. . Then, as the music plays, the movement shifts to the whole body, beginning with the right hand. Although the overall movement in this piece is very quiet, I felt that the hands or fingertips first present the direction and angles, and then the movement is generated/connected while being led by them. The sadness of the story in the chest, buried without anyone knowing, was expressed by the sobbing voice with the darkening of the lighting.

From “BLACKBIRD” by Benefit Nakamura

Killian’s “BLACKBIRD” was originally a duet, but this performance was a solo version. Although it had a different feel from the original, the twisting movements of her body suited her well, and her fresh, large swinging movements conveyed power.

The last piece is by Yoko Ando. She became the first Asian dancer to join the Frankfurt Ballet in 2001, and was the core dancer of the Forsythe Ballet for 15 years until its dissolution in 2015. Her new work “Moving Shadow” is inspired by “Spring and Shura,” a colloquial poem by Kenji Miyazawa, who was on a journey to find his ego while tormented by troubles, and recorded his feelings as if sketching them.

From Yoko Ando’s “MOVING SHADOW

The boxes were sparsely arranged on the stage. With a whisper (translated into English from the preface of the poem), a woman with an afro and wearing a monotone plaid dress walked into a large, hazy circle, swaying and shifting as if she were weightless. I was most impressed by the feeling of seeming to go on forever. The atmosphere was somewhat like the aftershadows created by streetlights in a back alley on a humid night in a free-spirited city. The dancers were Nozomi Kinouchi, a ballet-based blonde, and Taiyuu Yamaguchi, a hip-hop and breakdance-based dancer, who were selected from among 80 audition applicants.

Kinouchi’s movements were strong and sharp like a blade, as if he were precisely piercing the ground. In one scene, Yamaguchi said, “Excuse me,” as if looking for someone, and suddenly repeated a street dance-added movement. In particular, his twisting and robotic movements, based on hip-hop and breakdance, were smooth yet elastic. His superb sense of balance when dancing was as if he had bonded his feet and would probably never fall down under any circumstances. I could have followed his movements and lines of motion throughout the performance. The refined sense of the stage, the music, the costumes, and the smooth, rich colors of Ando and the unique, eye-catching young enthusiasm created by the two was exceptional.

 

How did the settings of “origin of choreography” and “succession/reconstruction of choreography” approach the three dance artists and the audience this time? How should the relationship between the framework advocated in the texts and the works be understood? As I read the texts on Fokin, Kylian, and Forsythe by the various experts in the program titled “Genealogy of Dance,” I recalled memories that I had memorized with great effort when I was taking the entrance exam for graduate school in Japan. I watched the works of these world masters with curious eyes. And in the new works of three of Japan’s leading dance artists, I glimpsed their efforts to explore something different from the styles of those masters.
We cannot deny who we have learned from, but perhaps because the work is our own and our own alone.

Triple bill by DaBY’s first associate choreographer Ryu Suzuki

Two projects that DaBY and Aichi Arts Center have collaborated on are “Genealogy of Dance” and “Ryu Suzuki Triple Bill” with the goal of creating an environment where people can concentrate on their creative work and to perform their works in various theaters in Japan and abroad. Now we would like to introduce Ryu Suzuki’s Triple Bill performance.

Among the younger generation of Japanese dancers, Ryu Suzuki is an artist recognized for his outstanding talent as a choreographer and dancer. Like most Japanese choreographers, I have always taken it for granted that I would choreograph, dance, procure costumes, transport art, apply for grants, contact staff, and do everything myself from start to finish. However, because the performance was postponed due to Corona, I was unexpectedly given almost two years to create the piece. Working with experts in the fields of stage design, lighting, and costumes, I was able to take a unique approach to the work, not simply choreographing sensitively, but also struggling deeply together with the theme we had set.

From “never thought it would” by Ryu Suzuki

My favorite piece was the solo “never thought it would”. This piece was inspired by a line from Goethe’s poem “Selige Sehnsucht. Suzuki juxtaposed a moth that never stops flying toward the light with his own incessant dancing. The emotion and expression of this work were original and skillfully highlighted.
The entire stage is lit by many long, single-line lights (straight fluorescent lights in Japan), each hanging at an angle. After the darkening of the stage, a single fluorescent light at the front of the stage begins to blink. He comes running out from the back of the stage diagonally toward the front and falls to the ground. He lies down with beat music, twisting and turning, contracting and stretching again, his movements spreading from one part of his body to the rest of his body.

Then, in a tenacious movement, he slowly moves across the front of the stage while lying on his side. At this point, he wiggles his whole body up and down around his back, in close contact with the floor, like a single larva, not a moth. In the blue-black lighting, colors such as pale pink and pale green are added, and light passes through each fluorescent light at a fast pace as if electricity were flowing through them.

When he soon arrives at the upper front of the stage, he sits up and sits down. Slowly and stickily, then quickly and flexibly, his movements, which swept across the space on the floor, changed just as the audience felt they were about to become bored or accustomed, and he gradually moved toward the center of the stage. When he finally stood up in the latter part of the show, it was as if a moth had burned itself out for the last time. But even when he reached his climax, it was not a mere violent gesture; every moment was well composed with modulated movements of power, slow and fast adjustments, repetitions, stops, and staccatos.

From “never thought it would” by Ryu Suzuki

What I appreciate most about this work is that his dance thoroughly defended its role as a single object. Not only was it silent, a rhythmic musical variation with strong and weak beats, and adorned with installation art, but it was also flashing, sometimes surprisingly bright, sometimes electrifying, and sometimes color-changing, absolutely influencing the visual expression. In this context, the work was a skillful mesh of simple spatial patterns and dances that played head-on with a lean figure.

Ryu Suzuki, “When will we ever learn?

The second piece was “When will we ever learn? In this piece, Suzuki, together with three dancers, overwhelmed the stage with tremendous skill and speed. Therefore, rather than trying to uncover what the theme of the piece was and what it was trying to give to the audience, I watched it while sharing the sensory experience of the piece itself.
The stage was lit by a diamond-shaped space, with three lights on each side. Each dancer was assigned a place to stand outside the rhombus. The dancers in yellow suits, led by Suzuki, who was wearing a black leather jacket, entered the space and danced in their own unique ways. If the first part of the performance was mainly composed of solos by each dancer, the next scene was a transitional one, with the dancers taking off their jackets and pants near the lighting at the back of the diamond shape. Rock and pop music by The Velvet Underground, Neil Percival Young, David Bowie, Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger, and others were interspersed throughout.

Ryu Suzuki, “When will we ever learn?

Just as he is a graduate of the Lambert School in England and has experience in the works of Akram Khan, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, Philippe Doucoufle, and Inbal Pinto & Avshalom Pollak, the three dancers have worked with Batsheva Dance Company and NDT. As such, their dancing skills are excellent, but they also excel in their ability to breathe together. Their group dances are especially powerful in terms of staccato and intensity. Their movements were smooth and very fast rather than dynamic, yet always graceful and steady. These movements, aided by the natural movement of the dancers, which was as continuous as water flowing through the air, would have made for a cut that would have enhanced the refined spatial composition no matter when or where the picture was taken. Not only was the timing of when the dancers stopped moving the perfect form, but even the process of movement seemed to be picturesque no matter where it was cut. The Corona allowed the dancers to have a longer practice period than expected, but this perfect harmony was unexpectedly rewarding.


From “Proxy” by Ryu Suzuki

Lastly, we have “Proxy,” a work with a distinctly Japanese flavor. This work may have been a device for people in the past to gain anonymity through the use of ghosts, which may have allowed them to free themselves by allowing ghosts to speak for the feelings and words they had stored up in their minds. In the modern age, on the other hand, the body has become a ghost without any substance, or in other words, the avatar in the virtual world may perform the same function.

The stage will feature the unique work of a puppet artist who dismantles discarded dolls and joins them together to create new characters, along with six dancers. A girl in a black T-shirt and skirt moves slowly and softly, then stops abruptly and repeatedly, after which the dancers, male and female, emerge, each with a doll, stand in a horizontal line at the front of the stage, and bow their heads. The dolls, each with a strange face, stand in front of them as if they were their alter egos, and their gestures become more and more intense. Throughout the film, this scene is repeated many times, but it is the core element of the piece.

The dancers were all dressed in black tee-shirts and trousers, reminiscent of the role of black actors in kabuki, who wear black costumes to assist the actors so that they cannot be seen, and these costumes were thought to represent the emotions of the puppets. The intense yet moderate unison of the group dances, such as the intense breathing and footsteps, and the collective expression that climaxed with the gorgeous music and lighting, where one dancer danced and knocked down the dolls one by one and the dancers simultaneously fell down, were also unique. During the performance, the female soloist, who stood holding a doll and expressed her emotions by using furious gestures, repeating only one movement with extremely angry breathing and sobbing voice, and the flexible male soloist, who danced by jumping and spinning around the floor, including tumbling, created a good contrast.

From “Proxy” by Ryu Suzuki


I watched the performance with a slightly chilly feeling as if I was watching a horror movie, but the dancers’ non-verbal physical expressions of their cries through the dolls, which symbolize ghosts, were truly powerful and interesting. In particular, the frank expressions of the dancers, mostly teenagers, shone like fireflies in the darkness.

Suzuki said that for this performance, the goal was not to create sensory choreography, but a collective method with a unique approach to collaborate with experts in various fields. As such, the first piece, “never throught it would,” was the most harmonious and well-executed in its use of fluorescent art and light, tense music, and Suzuki’s originality. The second piece, “When will we ever learn?” shone with its development and dancers’ brilliant skills in keeping with the restricted use of space in the diamond-shaped lighting on the stage. The third piece, “Proxy,” was developed with a Japanese mindset, but used the unique medium of ghosts to express the world’s shared sense of the constrictions of our time in a pure and poignant way.

I applaud Eri Karatsu, Executive Producer and DaBY Artistic Director of Aichi Arts Theatre, who faced many difficulties and persevered until the completion of the two projects “Dance Genealogy” and “Suzuki Ryu Triple Bill,” which were planned as the first stage of DaBY’s launch. I would like to applaud the choreographers and performers, as well as all the staff members and others involved, who worked with Eri Karatsu, Executive Producer and DaBY Artistic Director of Aichi Arts Theatre, and the choreographers and performers, who did not give up hope until the end.

 

*This article has been translated into Japanese by Dance Base Yokohama with permission from Byungju Choi.

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Byung-Joo Choi, Reporter (Artistic Director, SAI)
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Source: 더프리뷰(http://www.thepreview.co .kr)
Photo courtesy of Aichi Arts Center, Dance Base Yokohama

 

 

Choi Byung-joo