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

　The performance by Hana Sakai, one of Japan’s leading ballet dancers, of Mikhail Fokin’s well-known “The Dying Swan,” a work with a famous choreography, is a luxury in itself. The way the swan flies across the lake and lands on the water’s surface. The sight of a dying life struggling to breathe its last. The series of vocabulary that is delivered in just a few minutes shows that Sakai has completely mastered the use of the swan’s body.
　This time, however, it did not end there. Immediately after finishing “The Dying Swan” and bowing to the applause, I noticed that the swan and the cellist had already begun to perform “The Dying Swan: The Truth of Its Death. Sakai dances as before, but this time she speaks in a slurred, spoken dialogue. What is the swan thinking on the verge of death, why in the world is it dying, and what is Sakai thinking as he dances the choreography? In a single narrative, multiple perspectives become one in order to unravel the work “The Dying Swan” at the level of choreography and representation, respectively.
　In this production by Toshiki Okada, a leading figure in contemporary theater, dance time, which normally moves linearly with the music, is repeatedly stopped, stretched, and repeated. The dancer, who usually “becomes” a swan by dancing the choreography, is forced to “be” a swan outside of the choreography – to speak and act as a swan – in the time torn apart by his own narrative.
　Choreography and body language, which had been adhering to each other, are now separated and presented in this way. Only then may we be able to truly appreciate the richness of the body.

Benefit Nakamura, solo from “BLACKROOM”/”BLACKBIRD

　On the dimly lit stage, only Nakamura’s face and hands, dressed in black, stand out in white. Her body seems to be guided by her right hand as she quietly steps out into the light and begins to dance. The right hand sometimes dances as if writing in a notebook, and sometimes as if writing with a large brush, while the body follows the right hand. According to the inserted narrative, this is apparently a room for listening to words that someone had thought of but never said out loud. The room was originally pure white, but has been blackened by the words scrawled all over the walls. The dancer/narrator, who has continued to write, quietly at first, and gradually struggling, in the service of the words, eventually decays there without anyone knowing about it…
　According to Nakamura himself in a previous interview, in his work with Ily Kylian, Nakamura has been asked to express his unspoken thoughts through hand gestures. On the other hand, in another interview, Nakamura said that Kylian taught him to try to express choreography and movement with words. Nakamura, who has been moving back and forth between words and dance in this way, expresses the service of words as a solitary work that leads to death in his own work “BLACKROOM”.
　The following piece, “BLACKBIRD,” was created by Kilian for Nakamura, who became independent from NDT, and depicts a dancer from birth to maturity. The two works, each with its own separate story, are, oddly enough, danced in tandem, giving them new meaning. After the death scene in the black room, “BLACKBIRD” begins when the lights come back on. 2 minutes into the short solo, the dancer is detached from the umbilical cord and begins to walk on her own feet. The costume that had been covering her arms is removed, and now her entire arm, from the shoulders up, is beautifully illuminated. The arm, which has been reborn like a phoenix, is no longer writing anything as it soars in the air.

Ryu Suzuki, “When will we ever learn?”

　The stage was lit up like a wrestling ring, with two men and two women. They entered the ring in turn and danced solos, each with a distinct personality, and then danced a duet, this time two by two. The first two dancers performed disturbing choreography reminiscent of violence and harassment. The next two dancers were a man and a woman passionately in love. By the time the choreography had come full circle, the roles and positions of each of the four dancers had become clear.
　Then, the costumes are removed and the choreography – that is, the roles and positions – are switched. A man dances the choreography of an oppressed woman, and a duo of women dances the choreography of a man and a woman in love with each other. The choreography is repeated over and over again with different casts. In this repetition, we find what is interchangeable and what is not.
　The interchangeability of dancers, which is assumed by the mechanism of choreography. And the fundamental impossibility for us human beings to stand on the same footing as others. When will we ever learn? Even if the choreography is exactly the same, if different dancers dance it, different things will be represented at different levels of movement and meaning. Violence and expressions of love change their meanings depending on the combination and order of the dancers.
　We cannot become others by dancing the choreography of others. But still, there must be some traces left behind by dancing the bodies of others. That is how I feel. This work has a mysterious persuasive power that cannot be reached by rational argument.

Yoko Ando “MOVING SHADOW

　Genealogy of Dance” is an attempt to discover what has been inherited and developed by juxtaposing the choreography of the dancers’ origins with their current work. However, the two young dancers who will perform with Yoko Ando, a Forsythe dancer, do not seem to have been trained in the Forsythe method. Nozomi Kinouchi, with short golden hair cropped back, has a ballet background. Yasuyu Yamaguchi, with her black hair braided into cornrows, is a street dancer, mainly old school. The combination of the three, including Ando with his afro, is quite contrasting in appearance and movement.
　The heavy bass, flowing with a slow beat throughout, is neither that of ballet nor that of the street; against a backdrop of sounds that seem to border the three bodies, three different solos are turned, sometimes overlapping solo to solo, and unisons begin. Kinouchi unfurls his sharp and small vocabulary without hesitation. Yamaguchi’s soloing, which at first was streetwise and rambunctious, gradually lost its streetwise feel as he blended in with the scene. Ando maintains a perfect distance from the two, either dancing with them, not dancing with them, or sometimes deliberately creating a “body that can’t dance” with them. Ando’s manner of acting, which is at once clownish and somewhat like a parent or teacher, is the glue that holds the marriage together in a way that could not have been achieved by the two young dancers alone. And perhaps that is one way of inheritance.
　I see, it is not only about tapping one’s vocabulary into younger generations, but also about inheritance. What on earth is genealogy? What is passed on to the next generation through this work? Ando’s gestures made me think about this unintentionally.

Ryu Suzuki, “never thought it would

　A solo work by choreographer Ryu Suzuki. In contrast to the other two works presented as a triple bill, which were composed from a clear level of meaning, this work seems to have been born out of a fetishism for pure objects. For example, the cold light from the countless bare fluorescent lamps hanging from the ceiling. For example, the full-body tights that glisten like enamel in the light. And above all, Suzuki’s own body.
　The sequence of developments is thrilling, as if watching a single life form grow and metamorphose. Try sliding your limbs like a water strider while in the prone position. Then, supine, I crawl across the floor like an elegant scale insect. When he finally stands up, he remains on his feet and repeats body waves and isolations as if he is testing the possibilities of his body. It is not until the climax of the workout that he finally begins to walk on two legs. At first, they walk slowly, but thrillingly, with their knees raised high and shaking as if they are checking each step. Then they leap and take quick steps, and eventually they start to run. The repetition of the vigorous steps and the stillness from the movement are truly beautiful, reminding one of a life that has hatched and become whole.
　To continue dancing as a dancer may be an activity like being born again and again and metamorphosing in this way. To deconstruct one’s own body, which one has grown accustomed to, as a kind of object, and to taste it again as a fetish. When a part of such activities is performed as a work, an unknown creature in the form of a human being often appears on the stage.

Ryu Suzuki “Proxy

　A spotlight illuminates a puppet and a human figure placed at the front of the stage. Behind the motionless puppet, a human dancer repeats a short routine. Then another puppet floats next to the human dancer, and the second human dancer stands behind the puppet and performs a solo. Thus, before long, the stage is lined with six puppets and six corresponding human dancers.
　The French artist’s unique, splintered dolls with a strong sense of presence, and the dancers in all-black costumes. Or, a doll that does not move a muscle, and a dancer who dances eloquently in her own body language. It is as if these two beings complement each other and become one personality. The puppets themselves do not move, but instead the humans make them dance, and the six puppets continue to move and change their positions on the stage. Is this a group dance using objects? Or is it rather a group dance to serve things?
　The word “Proxy” in the title refers to an entity that serves as a proxy for the real thing, an entity authorized to act on behalf of others. In reflection, people today use various proxies as intermediaries between their flesh and blood and events. It seems that in this work, exotic dolls are placed as personas or avatars to represent the dancers. But is this really so? Which is the proxy here, the puppet or the human? No, in fact, it may be neither one nor the other. In the face of these two eloquent beings, we gradually lose sight of the meaning of making a sharp distinction between the real and the proxy.

Hashimoto Romance x Yae Yamamichi “Etan Guma ENIGMA

　The Gidayubushi performers are seated on a pedestal covered with a red cloth at the back of the upper stage. Every corner of the deserted stage was brightly lit, and the stepladders and ladders placed haphazardly in the lower part of the stage created an atmosphere like a backyard. Three dancers quietly appeared from the lower part of the stage, which looked somewhat bleak. At first glance, I understood that the three dancers were dancing against a background of narration and musical accompaniment, but something was not quite right.
　The three dancers, each of whom should have been able to dance in their own unique way, somehow did not make a special effort to show off their skills, but instead danced in a small, kitschy unison. Then, to their surprise, the man playing tayu on the dais staggered to the center of the stage as if led by the three dancers. The tayu, who was being danced to by the three dancers, found himself the star of the show. He reads his lines as he is urged, makes speeches in which he calls for the reformation of the world, and performs a grand stand-up routine against the monster stepladder controlled by the dancers, and even the members of the musical ensemble begin to dance with instruments in their hands.
　The powerful man who is carried on a portable shrine and dances, and the mastermind who dances eerily around him. The masses who start dancing when they see everyone else dancing. I see that here the dancers are not those who dance, but those who make even those who are not supposed to dance dance. They are modest enough to be called main dancers, but too strong to be called back-up dancers, leading the story in an eerie way. The “atmosphere” created by these women has created a completely different scene on the stage than at the beginning, when it should have been a bleak scene.

Mitsutane Ota