SF Chronicle: ODC Theater gets jump on butoh with 'ODD'

By Allan Ulrich (photo by Pak Han)


Welcome to the wide, wonderful, wacky, sometimes wearying world of butoh. This school of expressionist dance theater spawned in Japan after the horrors of World War II will be much with us the next couple of weeks. The style's most peripatetic practitioners, the Sankai Juku company, will visit the Bay Area through Sunday, while films of Kazuo Ohno, butoh's peerless pioneer, will be screened at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.

However, ODC Theater got the jump on the rest of the pack Friday evening with its premiere of an unusual, unprecedented collaboration. "ODD," inspired by the Norwegian figurative painter, Odd Nerdrum, united Shinichi Iova-Koga's inkBoat collaborative with Oakland's Axis Dance Company, which integrates able and disabled performers. In the past, the troupe has commissioned pieces from dance world heavy hitters like Bill T. Jones and Joe Goode, but rarely has it been tested as in this unbroken, 75-minute opus. And rarely has it emerged with such stunning results.

The lexicon of butoh inclines to graduated movement delivered by supple, contorted bodies and often articulated at a glacial pace, frequently approaching stasis, not surprising from a country that suffered nuclear attack. The apocalyptic mood yields the gaping mouths and confrontational gazes appropriated from Edvard Munch. Choreographer Iova-Koga has worked brilliantly with Axis, smoothly deploying wheelchair-bound Alice Shepherd and Rodney Bell, who, near the start, delivers an ominous monologue about guns. Long-time Axis fans who have come to expect Bell's duetting with diminutive Sansherée Giles will not be disappointed.

Iova-Koga strives to vary the pace and patterning. He fills the performance space with processions, unisons and solo outings. He smoothly blends his dancers and those from Axis, and, in the finale, he sets 19 barefoot dancers whirling, shuffling and hopping manically across the field of vision. The individual personalities of the inkBoat performers also come through, notably in a playful (everything is relative) duet for Yuko K and Peiling Kao.

Iova-Koga expertly mines the dark vein of absurdist humor that infiltrates butoh. His opening monologue describing Nerdrum's style (a projection of a painting might have helped) concludes with a physical feat that left this observer gasping. The recounting of a hilarious anecdote about John Lennon and Paul McCartney almost passes without notice.

The danger in butoh performance lies in treading a thin line between sustaining a vocabulary that depends on a high degree of physical rigor and permitting the stylization to slip into mannerism. Iova-Koga never crosses that frontier, though a bit of editing might improve the piece.

"ODD," which transfers to Oakland next weekend, arrives with an impressive team of collaborators. Cellist Joan Jeanrenaud, a frequent participant in Axis' ventures, contributed an effective score performed live and amplified. Seated on an elevated platform, Jeanrenaud alternates contemplative passages with discordant episodes. The versatile Dohee Lee supplies percussive interludes, some barely perceptible, others painfully resonant, and wordless chants which suggest rumblings in the soul. Heather Barsarab's lighting does the job magnificently.

ODD: Axis Dance Company and inkBoat. Through Sun. Malonga Casquelord Center for the Arts, 428 Alice St., Oakland. $10-$22. (800) 838-3006. www.brownpapertickets.com.

E-mail Allan Ulrich at datebookletters@sfchronicle.com.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/11/08/DD951G899C.DTL

This article appeared on page E - 2 of the San Francisco Chronicle

Review: 'Physically integrated' AXIS delivers moving performance

Review: 'Physically integrated' AXIS delivers moving performance

By JENNIFER BREWER

Published in The Portland Press Harald

The performers of AXIS Dance Company danced, rolled, spoke and sang their way through Saturday's program at Bates Dance Festival, in a gripping, moving and exciting performance.

AXIS is the groundbreaking dance troupe, founded in 1987, that has created a dialogue and re-evaluation of how disability does and does not affect artistic movement.

At Bates, performers included two fully able-bodied dancers, one with amputations and three in wheelchairs with different degrees of mobility. Their term for the company's makeup is "physically integrated.

Differences in physicality proved to be both central and almost superfluous to the performance. Every piece involved examination of physical ability and/or specific use of wheelchairs in the choreography. At the same time, the choreographic whole transcended reference to differing ability.

Each of the three pieces presented Saturday was created by a choreographer in collaboration with the dancers. Each included the spoken word, with or without music. Snatches of song and some skit-type acting were integrated, expanding the concept of onstage dance performance to be more multi-disciplinary and multi-textured.

"the beauty that was mine, through the middle, without stopping" (Joe Goode, choreographer), posed questions about image and ability, using two large wooden frames as frames and mirrors for the dancers.

"This is a picture of me, but not really me, in the end" was thematically spoken by Rodney Bell from his wheelchair and repeated later by Lisa Bufano. Bufano danced without prostheses in mirror poses with Janet Das on the other side of the frame. Later, Bufano returned to the stage with prostheses, moving with less fluidity, and said, "This is me, walking."

Here and in the next piece, "Vessel," associate director Sonsheree Giles performed sensual duets with Bell in which the two dancers seemed to meld. Bell made athletic use of his chair, including flipping over so that Giles could float and spin on a single wheel. Their limbs rose and entwined, in floor and chair work, challenging boundaries of perceived division and ability.

Bell and artistic director Judith Smith also challenged perceptions of ability by supporting the able-bodied dancers in falls and recoveries, and manually manipulating their bodies.

For "Vessel" (Alex Ketley, choreographer), the dancers' improvised words during movement were recorded and arranged by Carol Snow into an image-poem played over a background score.

Bell's "When you're planted, pushed down in something deep, you just want to push up" accompanied his lying on his back and then regaining his chair with help from Giles, in a posture suggestive of childbirth.

Alice Sheppard performed grand torso sweeps, balancing on her footrest and falling to her side, creating fascinating and complex geometries. Her recorded vocalizations were particularly telling in overall artistic terms, including the open-ended phrase, "In the absence of music..." and summary statement, "How do you talk about this when it's movement without words?"

"Light Shelter" (David Dorfman, choreographer) was an electric composition, with the creative use of onstage lighting symbolic of the dancers' sparking energy and athleticism.

Between lines of fluorescent lights at the front and back of the stage, Bell, Das, Giles, Sheppard and Sebastian Grubb flew, spun and contorted in group and solo movement. When they performed in a line, the jointly-created shapes were stunning, with almost frenetic movement punctuated by sudden stillness upon Smith's called-out instructions.

AXIS's performance gave concrete, non-euphemistic meaning to the term "differently-abled." Unconventional elements weren't gratuitous or distracting; instead, they enlarged and enhanced the choreography.

Each of the performers, whatever the status of their limbs, had moments of individual transcendence, with an unusually complete meshing -- for any dance troupe -- of all the dancers into a holistic onstage organism.

Jennifer Brewer is a freelance writer, teacher, musician and dancer who lives in Saco.