BWW Reviews: Seeking 'Courage' at Kumu Kaheo Theatre

 

The tre' avant garde Dark Night Series at Kumu Kahua Theatre, presents "Courage", part of the "Ruinedmap" dance performance series. Featuring the fierce and penetrating stone flute maestro Kazuya Yokozawa who provides the sole musical accompaniment.

First, a word about Yokozawa: he is a graduate of the Osaka Art University, and is from Nagano, Japan. He played several flutes this evening, both wood and stone, and is perceived as a specialist of the stone flute. Yokozawa has preformed world wide, including at Carnegie Hall. One can understand how he has earned a reputation as a pioneer in the craft from his performance on Friday, July 13^th.

The lights are extinguished, and one senses Yokozawa's entrance, stage right. A spotlight follows him as he gains the stage, and one gets the disturbing impression (based on his garb and artifacts on the mat he sedately sits upon) that we are about to observe a Samurai committing Hari Kiri.

The stage is again shrouded in darkness, and the piercing notes of a flute sound. The dancers appear in a circle of light. They seem haunted, wraith-like with scant leotards and shreddEd White cloth, faces smeared with translucent white paint. Beautiful, strange and distant, their expressions offer no emotion, as if lost in a trance (or dream). They move.

An untrained eye may consider their performance stilted and random, but I can see the discipline, focus and skill. The press release (link found at end of this review) provides a little background about how they have prepared: they have "trained extensively-tapping into new muscle groups in their bodies so that they can dance choreographies so unfamiliar that they might as well be learning a new genre of dance." BWW.

The dancers move as one in a pattern: static and flow, static and flow. There is great tautness, and then a moment later, there is a beautiful montage of hands and arms joining, waving together, capturing the rhythm of ocean waves. Then hands flutter open and shut like blinking eyes. The stillness between moves is as important as movement. Wrists lock together, elbows, opening and closing, followed by a strained shuffling across the stage;
Sad and beautiful and strange.

The male dancer, Spencer Garrod, breaks away from the women and begins a very raw solo performance. He gives the impression that he is in the throes of a terrible internal struggle, almost as if he were fighting an illness or drug addiction, his face rigid with internal pain, his gestures lurching and palsied.

Meanwhile, Yokozawa delivers sharp hits to a metal bowl, creating random percussive accents that increase the drama and intensity.

The dancers now come together and grasp a slender piece of raw bamboo susbended by thin chords from the ceiling. Tearing it from it's resting place, in their hands it becomes a rudder guiding them across water. Shadows move, and the front dancer collapses. Such pathos !

Yokozawa switches to the shrill keening of the stone flute. Another dancer, Gwen Arbaugh, performs solo, twisting around the bamboo as other dancers remain at the far end of the pole. All rise with the tones of the flute. The Arbaugh avatar attempts to escape the others, but then we realise they are as bound as she.

There is a reversal of power dynamic, and suddenly Arbough rises and lifts the pole, and in so doing, lifts the others with it. Eventually all are free, and sounds of a wood flute bring us to rest.

Junco Mizumochi, not given an obviouos solo performance, never-the-less demonstrates great sensitivity, providing continuity to the emotional themes of the different tableaus.

And so it goes as we bear witness to this enigmatic drama: ebb and flow, tension and despair, grace and hope.

How to interpret "Courage" ? Is this a contemplation on how to experience beauty in the face of hopelessness ? Here on this dark and empy stage, have we been drawn into the internal universe of humankind at the brink annihilation ? Are they telling us there is always beauty ?

I turned to the fellow snapping pictures behind me (photographer Orrin Nakanelua)
and asked what he thought about "Courage".

"This is my second time seeing it." He said. He liked it as well as I did.

"What did you see?" I asked him.

"I saw children lost in a forrest, then building a fire to keep warm. I saw fireflies." He said.

What is the mark of a brilliant performace ? Is it that each of us comes away with elements of our own life interwoven within, each completely distinctive and sometimes even unrelatable to what others have perceived ?

If that is how it is defined, then we can rest assured, Courage is brilliance.
Read more: http://hawaii.broadwayworld.com/article/Kumu-Kahua-Theatre-Will-Present-courage-713-14-20120712#ixzz20wUDI3AE

Kumu Kahua Theatre website: http://kumukahua.org/

Kumu Kahua Theatre on Facebook http://www.facebook.com/events/469033563113781/

Utube perfromance of Kazuya Yokozawa: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1586269599/courage-a-dance-work-with-stone-flute-by-kazuya-y

 

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