Sunday, November 11, 1990
I went to a museum opening and dance performance in this tiny town with all the sensibilities of Buda (and probably smaller). I met several artists from Tokyo. The reason I went was that Jenny was participating in the dance with this guy from France and several people from Tokyo.
The dance was held outdoors in a cleared field on which a stage, several wooden structures, and several geometric pools of colored water had been constructed. We gathered at sunset. It had turned very cold and clear and dry. People built bonfires in 40-gallon oil drums. Watching the fires, the smoke and sparks rising in the golden haze of sunset, the silhouettes of figures moving between the fires, created an eerie, ritualistic atmosphere.
The first dancer wore dress pants and a tie. He is a famous butoh dancer from Tokyo, but I didn't understand or connect emotionally with him and his spastic movements. The second dance featured a woman who moved slowly and woodenly across the field, while a male dancer, who 10 days earlier had fought with a woman and in his anger kicked a glass door, severed a tendon, and thus was reduced to dancing with a cast and crutches, moved anguishedly about. Along one side of the field, a wall of fire was burning. The man flung himself into the pools of colored water and when he came out the air was so cold steam rose off his skin. An attendant poured oil in another pool and set it ablaze. I found th he third dance, by the Frenchman, the most interesting. At the end, one man was suspended on a wire above the stage; a woman's shadow was cast on a white sheet as she danced, and the Frenchman was buried alive and then reborn, crawling naked across the field until he reached the woman.
After the performance, we grilled meat and vegetables over the fires and drank beer and sake.
Posted by M Sinclair Stevens
November 17, 2003
Share Your Thoughts
It's 1:55 PM and I'm sitting in the staff room. The sun is shining; the birds are singing. A spicy scent is wafting off the trees. Gotta find out what kind of trees these are. Now I know what you're going to say...that anyone who watches 8 straight hours of Twin Peaks is bordering on the obsessive. But when you live in a town where it's not unusual to hear short people babbling incomprehensibly at you, nothing is that strange. I'm reminded of the time... But you've heard that story once or twice before, haven't you?