Preview
SUMIDA RIVER
Denise Fujiwara
Choreographed by Natsu Nakajima
Presented by One Yellow Rabbit
Runs January 14 to 18
Vertigo Playhouse (Tower Centre)
One of the truly magical elements of the High Performance Rodeo is its ability to morph art forms so fluidly from one discipline to the next. "Without that integration," says visiting Toronto dancer Denise Fujiwara, "combining forms like theatre and dance can sometimes be like mixing oil and water."
This is not the case, however, in many Asian performance traditions. In town for the first time with her highly acclaimed Sumida River, Fujiwara has been blending styles for close to 25 years on the stage, which has included work in Butoh dance. A theatrical form of movement that began in 1959 and flourished in the 1960s, Butoh was once a radical departure from other Asian performance methods, but through nurturing and development, carved a permanent place for itself in international contemporary-dance communities.
"It’s a modern form," explains Fujiwara, "but its principles are diametrically opposed to those of contemporary dance. I didn’t know that when I first performed it, but I quickly realized it. While contemporary dance tends to value form and dynamic – filling space and using time in a very linear sense – Butoh values the internal motivation, the drive behind the dance. It has much more of an internalized importance."
Fujiwara’s connection to Sumida River began well over nine years ago, when she first began to develop the piece alongside Tokyo choreographer and Butoh master Natsu Nakajima for Ottawa’s Canada Dance Festival. Based on Motomasa’s 15th-century Japanese Noh play Sumidagawa, the source for inspiration is the widely known and tragic legend of a mother whose kidnapped son never returns. In Fujiwara and Nakajima’s use of sacred movement and their internalized approach, some elements of Noh theatre remain.
"It has a Noh structure of jo ha kyu," Fujiwara explains. "The work starts very slowly (jo) and increases in complexity (ha) and then continues to climax (kyu) before returning to jo in the fourth section – to bring the audience back and prepare them to leave the theatre."
The rest, adds Fujiwara, is pure Butoh interpretation. Rather than recreating the play with traditional narrative, Nakajima has infused contemporary dance into the structure to convey the very essence of the story itself – the tragic inner journey of a mother who has lost her child. The results are strong images and almost athletic movement, with costumes that slowly evolve throughout and a broad sound combining eastern and western music.
It’s precisely this universal appeal that accounts for Sumida River’s success throughout Canada, the U.S. and, most recently, at Copenhagen’s Traces Danscenen Festival. Contemporary dance usually dazzles its audience with shape and form, an energy that flows directly from the stage and into the crowd. With Butoh, the idea is to allow the opposite to happen, using an internalized technique that draws the audience into what’s happening on stage. However that happens, Fujiwara observes, it seems to be working. And despite reprising her role again and again, she never ceases to make new discoveries.
"My understanding of the work has deepened a lot over the years," says Fujiwara. "I am a mother, so this already has a great deal of meaning to me, and I think everyone can relate to this story. Who knew when we started it that it would have these legs? But I’ll keep going with it as long as I can."
Even as she prepares to take Sumida River to India, Fujiwara has been networking with similar creators around the world, often bringing them to Canada as guest instructors for Toronto’s biennial CanAsian Dance Festival, which Fujiwara co-founded in 1997. With North American tours of four other solo creations (Spontaneous Combustion, Vanishing Acts, Elle Laments and Brief Incarnations) under her belt, Fujiwara’s appearance at the Rodeo was inevitable. Considering how rarely one gets to take in Butoh performance, we can only hope that Calgary becomes a regular stop for her in the future. |
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