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Sculpture in the air

Saburo Teshigawara is in town with a new masterpiece, in which he tells the story of a man's search for his place in space, time and inside a prison of locked minds. PHOTO: COURTESY OF NOVEL HALL

Japanese choreographer and artist Saburo Teshigawara returns to the stage of Novel Hall tonight with his masterpiece Pages in Bones, which displays his virtuosity as a choreographer, a dancer and a lighting designer.

Pages in Bones is described as an "installation work," which is apt considering most reviews over the years have focused as much on his use of space and imagery as on the dancing. Teshigawara has been quoted as saying that dance is sculpture, sculpture in air.

Teshigawara created and premiered the piece at the Theatre am Turm in Frankfurt as a solo work. He revised it in 2003 by adding two female dancers.

Bones tells the story of a man's search for his place in space, time and inside a prison of locked minds. The piece opens and closes with Teshigawara's head spot-lit in quiet concentration. His concentration never wavers, demonstrated by the control over his body shown in his solos. But even when he is motionless, he appears a bundle of compacted energy.

The 55-minute work is divided into three sections. In the first Teshigawara dances alone, before being joined by one woman for the second segment and then the other for the third. But rather than being partners for Teshigawara, the women serve more as shadows, each locked in her own private agonies.

Saburo Teshigawara is in town with a new masterpiece, in which he tells the story of a man's search for his place in space, time and inside a prison of locked minds. PHOTO: COURTESY OF NOVEL HALL

Just as the trio appears one at a time, so do the elements of the set, which are carefully concealed and then highlighted by the lighting design. There is a 4.2m-high wall, which looks like it is made up of wooden blocks, but actually consists of hundreds of half-opened books, all of them blank. Thousands of men's shoes are piled up on the other side. The audience later discovers that a clear acrylic wall has divided them from the performers when one of the women begins hurling the shoes at the audience.

Performance notes WHAT: "Men Dancing" — Saburo Teshigawara in Bones in Pages WHERE: Novel Hall for Performing Arts (新舞臺), 3-1 Songshou Rd, Taipei (台北市松壽路3-1號) WHEN: Tonight and tomorrow at 8pm, Sunday at 3pm TICKETS: NT$500, NT$700, NT$900, NT$1,200, NT$1,500 NT$1,800; available at www.novelhall.org.tw, www.artstickets.com.tw and at the venue

Teshigawara's piece also calls for a bird, a live one — a crow to be exact — which reacts to the moving spots of light on stage and to the dancer's movements. And there in lies a tale, according to Elaine Huang (黃麗宇), public relations manager for Novel.

Crows are very intelligent birds and are also a common sight in Japan. Teshigawara believes that as much as people watch crows, the crows are also observing people. But Novel Hall couldn't find any crows in Taiwan to use, since here they are seen as an omen of bad luck, Huang said.

"It is really complicated to import a crow just for a performance so we are using a myna bird," Huang said. "But we don't know what will happen. We will try to keep it on the stage floor, but we don't want to clip its wings or impair its ability to fly, so we just don't know how it will react."

This weekend will mark Teshigawara's third appearance in the Novel Dance series, testament to the important role he continues to play in the development of contemporary dance both in Asia and elsewhere.
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