Dancers of the
Nihon Buyo
Foundation
President,
Nishikawa Senzo
(living national treasure)
Musicians
Nagauta
Ensemble and
Hayashi Ensemble
Choreography
Fujima Totaro
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Nihon Buyo
Peacock Theatre
11 - 12 March 2005
For the hectic, multi-tasking, denizens of today's world, it takes some severe concentration to follow the compacted gestures and glacial progression of Nihon Buyo, Japan's oldest traditional dance form.
Even Noh, the most refined form of Japanese theatre, whose slow, highly symbolic, movements and declamations are notoriously demanding of its audiences, seems more immediately accessible, because of the presence of a spoken narrative.
Yet the four pieces performed by the Nihon Buyo company, which visited London with only two performances at the Peacock Theatre on 11 and 12 March, were all completely compelling. The dance movement, accompanied by eight musicians and three singers, was relentlessly understated: there were no leaps, no pirouettes, and almost no sustained speed. Except for the odd somersault, and occasional vigorous stamping and turning, the dancers generally slid across the stage in their two-toed socks. A lot is clearly going on underneath their beautiful kimonos, but you have to infer the great palette of concealed movement and feeling from the perfectly executed and sometimes quite contorted external gestures.
With this minimalist dance vocabulary the thirteen-strong troupe conveyed an astonishing range of emotion. In a solo work, Tomoyakko (The Vassal) we were treated to an hilarious comical dance of a manservant, dressed in bright purple and other garish colours, who had lost his master in a red-light district. In Senkei (The Depiction of the Fans), performed by six male dancers bearing fans, we had a mystical dance worshipping nature and creation. In Shiokumi (Tide Gatherer) a woman expresses wistful and ardent feelings for her lover.
In the final performance, Kumagai Rensho - Samurai Naozane, a story about a Samurai warrior who must kill his own son to save the emperor's illegitimate son, we had the essence of tragedy. A man is faced with an insoluble conflict between his loyalty to family and obligations to the ruling order, and honour and self-responsibility demand that he choose the latter. This was the world premiere of this marvellous choreography, and here we were treated to the presence of Nishikawa Senzo X, who is a so-called 'Living National Treasure' in Japan, the highest honour that the government there can bestow upon a citizen who embodies one of that country's revered cultural traditions.
Nishikawa, born in 1928 and still in magnificent form, is not just a great artist; he is also the creator of the Nihon Buyo Foundation, which he set up in 1990. He has done more than perhaps anyone else alive to carry forward this ancient dance form, already recorded in Japan's oldest history book, Kojiki, completed in AD712. Westerners as well as Japanese have him in their debt.
Simon May
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