Yuragi: In a Space of Perpetual Motion. - BAM Opera House, New York, New York - dance reviews

Dance Magazine, March, 1997 by Lynn Garafola

Sankai Juku's new work, Yuragi: In a Space of Perpetual Motion, is shimmering and luminous, a vision of sensuous delight that makes it hard to recall the shock of the group's first performances in this country some ten years ago. Then, the accent was on the lurking horror of modern life and the soul's shriek of protest, with chalk-white bodies that tested the limits of human physicality--scaling walls, for instance, or moving so slowly as to make the appearance of change almost imperceptible. Like Pina Bausch's Tanztheater Wuppertal, Sankai Juku--and butoh generally--used the extremes of form to elicit the inner emotion or expression of a work.

Now, only the chalk-white bodies and time-arresting evolutions are left of that expressionist world. Yuragi, a 1993 coproduction of the Theatre de la Ville, Paris and the Ginza Saison Theater, Tokyo, and presented here as part of the Brooklyn Academy of Music's Next Wave Festival, invites us to contemplate a paradise of marvels, each more exquisite than the last. The set, designed by Ushio Amagatsu, Sankai Juku's artistic director, is simplicity itself--a dozen or so clear plastic discs suspended on wires. But how he teases our perceptions of those shapes, which can make you think of mushroom caps, or gondolas, or lily pads, or ultramodern Italian lamps. Sometimes, he uses them to create optical illusions, so that legs glimpsed through a gently swaying disc, seem to move independently from the rest of the body. Always, he reveals a passion for compositional harmony and brilliant lighting effects.

Less clear is the meaning of the piece. In a poem that appears in lieu of program notes, Amagatsu alludes to a state between wakefulness and sleep, "a reverie perhaps," where the body's normal response to stimuli is suspended. Although this certainly explains the work's contemplative atmosphere, it adds little to our understanding of its symbolic universe or the connections among its seven scenes.

That something is afoot is obvious from Amagatsu's powerful images. Many refer to nature and the human life cycle. In Scene 11 ("Donmiri--Wind Resembling Air"), for instance, the rise and fall of bodies under a brilliant saffron light suggest tender shoots and vernal sunshine, while in Scene VII ("Brimming Ripples"), the same bodies sit, then sink back to the floor as if wearied by old age. Equally compelling are the Western "memories" embedded in the choreography--the conjuring ritual of Scene III ("The Outer Reaches of Tranquillity") that distantly recalls The Rite of Spring, and in Scene V ("Utsuroi--From Shore to Opposing Shore") the tubular dress and hip-leaning movements that invoke Martha Graham. Where butoh once rejected Western forms, Yuragi acknowledges their existence.

The four dancers of the Yuragi ensemble--Semimaru, Toru Iwashita, Sho Takeuchi, and Taketeru Kudo--are all admirable. However, it is Amagatsu who reveals the absolute mastery of a form that only comes with maturity. Utterly controlled, with a perfection of line that never wavers, he conveys the infinitely minute yet spellbinding transformations of a world in constant metamorphosis.