Butoh and miscellaneous

The Mime Festival London is an annual event that brings together performers from different backgrounds and practice. However, as the name suggests, it is not exactly theatre or performance that the festival deals with. Looking through their site while getting informed on what was on and what could possibly interest me, I got the feeling that this initiative was very close to the art of circus, which I did admire as a child. Of course with the fusion of different arts together it is difficult to define a piece by a single term, but when an element seems to take over by far more than the others, then we are bound to tag it as such and such.


One of the works that caught my attention (and mind you, it was probably the only one on the internet site that did not include a video trailer) was Kitt Johnson's Rankefod. One of the reasons why I went to see it was that the performance was a solo work and since I have been doing solos so far, I considered it useful to see how she handled it. Also I am fascinated by the Japanese Butoh dance and although I have just received some basic training in that field so far, there is much to learn by watching. 

Kitt Johnson gave a stunning Butoh performance, yet very personal. Rankefod explored the origins of species and the dancer's body went though a series of transitions, which, combined with fairly simple but effective lighting, created images that were somehow awkward in appereance and yet familiar in their organicism. The exploration of species, translated into by the body of the dancer, was certainly given more weight by the nudity of the body, which revealed all muscles and therefore the smallest movements were sensed by just perceiving the breathing of veins. Butoh dance is often performed without clothing, tending to concentrate the spectators' attention solely on the body, which is the protagonist of the piece. The body of the dancer assumes such a strong role that it would overshadow any other static objects or set design which are part of the performative space. 


But however empty the scene looked to us, certain light effects revealed the presence of a panel at the back of the stage. Although its texture permitted some versatility in the visual play of light I found that it did not fit with the blunt and powerful presence of the body, the white and homogenous texture of its skin. The fakeness of the panel was reveled at the end of the show when lights were switched on and it triumphed in all its kitch and heaviness. It became the backdrop for the after show discussion. I didn't ask 'Why this panel?' because  the interviewer annoyingly paraphrased the audiences' questions for the official recording of the talk. 


It was a very good dance performance despite the fact that stage settings did not quite work for my understanding of the relationship body-space. Kitt Johnson's long plait, even though understandably there for practical reasons, seemed very much like those magic tails in Avatar, which gave the sense of species in a broader context, making this small detail more meaningful than the crafty and cumbersome panel.