Reflecting Mirrors

If you've never seen the Japanese form of dance called Butoh, or seen its main proponent, Sankai Juku, then you've missed one of the most beautiful pieces of art that exists.

I've seen Sankai Juku a number of times over the years, both at their home base in Paris, and locally, and have to say that they are the one dance troupe I would go out of my way to see and would always stay over in any city that they were in that I was visiting.

Last night we saw a piece that was created in 2000, but which I had never seen - Kagemi, Beyond the Metaphors of Mirrors. It was stunning, as usual, and different, as usual, from every other piece I've seen of theirs.

You can check out a review from the SF Chronicle - http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/11/16/DDGBHMCVDM1.DTL.

I mostly agree with the review, though I also think it's understated in the way that Amagatsu (the founder and choreographer of Sankai Juku) uses sparity and minimal movement combined with white to create both a gentle elegance and stunning, restful beauty with the tension and possibility of violence and dissonance always lingering at the edges. As in one of the segment titles, it is an infinite dialogue that the human race struggles with and one of the mirrors we need to hold up to ourselves and constantly examine.