inkBoat in Shinichi Iova-Koga's c(H)ord. Photo by Momo.
Even renowned dance artists have to produce a noteworthy evening once in a while, if only to justify their vaunted reputations. In the case of the remarkable, locally based dance-theater figure Shinichi Iova-Koga, some of us have been waiting for that to happen since 2004’s inventive Ame to Ame. Last weekend’s premiere of Shinichi’s c(H)ord, another of those bewildering Yerba Buena Center for the Arts commissions, was, however, a stillborn effort, a grippingly dispatched rehashing of generic Butoh tropes for audiences with a lot of time on their hands for a crash course in the style.
Granted, this collaboration between Shinichi’s inkBOAT company and sundry artists shows vast improvement over this dancer-choreographer’s last production (some tapioca about a man falling in love with a chicken), which played ODC Theater last year. But the performance of c(H)ord (the weird orthography hints at the pretentiousness of the affair) at YBCA Theater Friday (April 25) came down to an unbroken 90-minute catalogue of devices that have become traditional extrusions of this Japan-born, postwar, post-apocalyptic form of dance theater. There was nothing new here, a fact that seemed to delight the audience, who granted a standing ovation to this second performance of the three-night run.
This strain of Butoh, in which Shinichi trained in both Europe and Asia, is the kind that demands much patience from the observer, depending, as it does on bizarre evolving imagery, rather than linear progression or narrative inflections. The standard vocabulary includes achingly deliberate trajectories (via walking, all-fours, rolling or crawling) across the performance space, grotesque facial contortions and clawed limbs menacing confrontationally in the void.
Shinichi and his six disciplined international cohorts, who included Takuya Ishide, Yuko Kaseki (recalled fondly from Ame to Ame), Heini Nukari, Dana Iova-Koga, Dohee Lee and Sherwood Chen) keep up the level of muted intensity without ever attaining a plateau of inspiration. It’s a matter of slow, slower and slowest, and if you’re of a poetic and patient frame of mind, this all can add up to a fever dream of sorts. The piece does throw in some original moments near the end. A procession in silhouette features the banging of pots and pans (sure to wake the nodding), and there’s a dollop of theatrical magic in watching Shinichi struggling to free himself from the interior of a drumhead. c(H)ord needed more of that kind of inspired legerdemain.
Instead, we were treated to bouts of fourth-wall demolition, as the performers ranged and rambled through the auditorium. This, too, represents standard Butoh apparatus. I can, however, recall the legendary Akira Kasei doing all this and suffusing the theater with his personality. The most annoying, not to say, irrelevant participant in c(H)ord is the theater artist, Sten Rudstrøm, here compounding the artistic felony he committed in that chicken piece I alluded to earlier. Throughout the new work, Rudstrøm interrupts the movement to dispense parables, roll on the floor, and at one point, to urge us to rise in our seats. His banal musings, hideously amplified exhortations, provide nothing other than allowing the dancers a few moments to catch their breath.
True, c(H)ord possesses visual allure. Design elements (by Frank Lee and Mary Lois Hare) include a suspended wooden sculpture and what looks like a wooden rooftop downstage right. The costuming (by Dohee Lee and Johnny Kim) ran to the standard off-white rags, tinted with splotches of blood. Allen Willner enforced an evocative lighting scheme. Joshua Kohl’s soundscape juxtaposed natural and musical material.
The failure of c(H)ord to advance the form reminded me of how much the community misses Brechin Flournoy’s Butoh Festival, which ran for several seasons, before the producer tossed in the towel. If anyone out there wants to take up Flournoy’s torch, he or she certainly has all my encouragement.
