Channeling Hiroshima

Butoh, a modern Japanese dance form, has infiltrated the rest of the world as a cross-cultural id. Known for its shocking and enigmatic imagery, it was created to put a face on the inward grief of postwar Japan. Today the suffering has been generalized by a new generation of Japanese artists raised on anime. As a result, butoh has gained wide popularity and reached an unclassifiable level of diversity in performance. Ko Murobushi, a recognized master of the form, looked back to its origins in his “Handsome Blue Sky,” presented on Saturday at the Japan Society.The performance launched the Second New York Butoh Festival, which runs through October 18, and features other butoh artists at venues around the city, a panel discussion, workshop series, and even film screenings at Anthology Film Archives.“Handsome Blue Sky” recounts, among other things, the atomic catastrophe of World War II through the transformations of the body. It began in the aftermath: a powerful solo in near darkness, with Mr. Murobushi hunkered down on his knees. Only the backs of his feet were visible as he raised himself up with painful slowness. He was the collective survivor, alone in a tunneling silence. His body could be seen as a chronicle in which each part was a character. His feet curled and rolled feelingly like hands along the stage, while his hands reached down to numbly pad the ground.The work then moved on to re-create the horrifying event itself. With large sheets of brass, three dancers rotated the reflective surfaces toward the audience, producing distant thunder and explosions with their fists, followed by flashes of blinding light. In other places, too, the brass sheets combined with original choreography to create aesthetically charged visions of apocalypse.Although “Handsome Blue Sky” pays tribute to Tatsumi Hijikata’s pioneering influence (it premiered at the Hijikata memorial in Japan), Mr. Murobushi uses it as a point of departure, integrating into the form a more contemporary outlook. He leavened Saturday’s performance with the blackest yeast. There were passages of desperate humor: a round of finger-pointing accusations, homoerotic play, and even a rock-‘n’-roll coda to John Lennon’s “Woman” – “I know you understand / the little child inside the man” – while the dancers made agonized faces.The humor served to reinforce the centrality of the body as a seat of honest expression, even redemption. The dancers receded into the shadows, a humble exit into the wings known as atozusari, but for Mr. Muroboshi their arms were raised in triumph.***Also this weekend the Japan Foundation presented two premieres by emerging choreographers at Dance Theater Workshop. In “While Going to a Condition,” Hiroaki Umeda synchronized his body with video projections of his own design and a static-burst score by S20. Vertical and horizontal shafts danced on the divided screen behind him as Mr. Umeda scooped and flared in cybernetic bewitchment.The brightness of the screen had the effect of a camera flash, burning a floating image of Mr. Umeda into the viewer’s eyes. Adding to the disorientation, the music was abusively loud (ushers passed out ear protection with the programs). While engrossing at times, “While Going to a Condition” could not sustain the momentum – or I couldn’t: The strobe effect of the video became so blinding, I either had to close my eyes or look away.Yoko Higashino’s “Alarm! – Zero Hour Edition” was a sensationalized collage of loosely constructed vignettes, featuring a rogue’s gallery of guilty pleasures and popular fetishes: cheerleaders, a latex janitor, a self-powered robot donning a wig. The real dance must have happened backstage as Ms. Higashino’s troupe, Dance Company Baby-Q, changed costumes. Did I mention the man in white underwear, a prep tie, and rabbit ears?The work ostensibly dealt with the old standby theme of urban alienation. But although it earned renown last year in Japan, “Alarm” under whelmed here, feeling prankish and skin-deep.Nonetheless, credit is due to Kiyokazu Kakizaki’s lighting. She illuminated the myriad scenes with a kaleidoscopic variety of different shapes: cubes, cones, and trapezoidal rooms of light that often added dramatic unity between performers.

Channeling Hiroshima

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