Taipei dance audiences got their first look at Japanese choreographer Jo Kanamori and his Noism company this weekend at the National Theater and they liked what they saw.
Noism is a small troupe, just 10 dancers, but perfectly matched in technique and intensity. The 90-minute NINA was a crisply executed examination of control and submission that veered between mesmerizing and plain creepy. Although it dragged a bit towards the end, it was a good introduction to someone who is likely to be a major force in Asia dance for decades to come.
The company says its goal is to avoid any specific “ism” so they are free to draw on any and all possibilities, hence the name “No-ism.” However, there was a clear “ism” in evidence on Saturday — minimalism — from the choreography to the costumes, to the staging and score.
The costumes were basic: The women wore nude leotards that exposed every muscle, every rib, every breath and stripped them of any identity. The men wore simple black suits that gave them an eerily corporate uniformity. The only thing that differed was their heights, although Sawako Iseki, a veteran of Rudra Bejart Lausanne and Netherlands Dans Theater II, did stand out a bit.
The sublimation of individuality reinforced the sexual politics of the piece. The women were nothing more than stiff, inert mannequins to be handled, dragged, lifted and spun by their male handlers. NINA begins with one man sitting in a chair, staring at a standing women, with the other women laying scattered around the stage in a variety of lifeless poses. The men were emotionless as they roughly positioned and then danced with the women in a variety of duets, pas de trios and group pieces, while the women often appeared robotic.
The most animated the women got was when they lay flailing their arms and legs on the floor as their handlers lay on top of them, weighting them down until they were nothing but empty forms. But after that mock rape scene the power dynamics shifted. The men still propelled the women, but you could tell it was becoming hard to push them around. In the end, the roles were completely reversed. The women stripped the men down to flesh-toned briefs and T-shirts and then put on the men’s suits. The show ends with one woman seated in a chair, another standing next to her, looking a standing man, while the rest of the men lay inert around him.
CHILD’S PLAY
Earlier this month, the New Melody From the National Palace Museum (故宮新韻) series of theatrical productions hosted by the museum commenced a new program featuring the Taipei Li-Yuan Peking Opera Theatre (台北新劇團) performing segments from Journey to the West (西遊記). In both format and mood, it is a very different proposition from The Palace of Eternal Youth (長生殿) by Lanting Kun Opera Company (蘭庭崑劇團), which launched the New Melody series in July.
Where Lanting created a highly compressed but complete production of The Palace of Eternal Youth, Li-Yuan has opted for a more direct educational presentation in its 12-week New Journey to the West (新西遊記) program, which will rotate through four separate episodes from the story of the monk Tripitaka’s journey to India and the many dangers he meets on the way.
The episode on Wednesday, the second installment in the program, was that of The Gossamer Cave (盤絲洞), in which Tripitaka very nearly gets eaten by a spider demon.
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