I finally managed to watch the "Happy Dance — Cute Japanese Dance of Today" (vol. 1 & 2) program that was broadcast on TV in October. I can't receive WOWOW, so it took a while until I could borrow the video from someone I know at the TV station. I didn't expect too much from a dance program on TV, but it turned out to be quite a rewarding affair. Vol.1 featured Yasumoto Masako, while Vol.2 was dedicated to Strange Kinoko Dance Company. The Kinokos were just as brilliant and refreshing as always, but at this occasion I'd like to focus on Vol.1 with Yasumoto Masako. That is because I made a discovery that is impossible to make when witnessing the actual performance.
According to the person in charge at WOWOW, it was "not an arts-oriented program, but the idea was to highlight the cute and stylish notion of dance". That’s certainly not a totally wrong strategy if the goal is to broaden the fan base of contemporary dance, and the entire program was indeed composed very cleverly. There were Yasumoto-choreographed video clips by Asa-Chang & Junrei and Mr. Children, live footage of Southern All Stars, and comments on Yasumoto’s work by popular singer Hitotoyo and dramatist/writer/actor Matsuo Suzuki. Everything was made with the aim to make even those unfamiliar with dance feel at ease, whereas the main attraction of it all was a solo piece Yasumoto created and filmed for this program. The piece was "cute and stylish", and at once immensely artistic.
A prototype of the solo piece was presented also at "Azumabashi Dance Crossing", but there it looked very differently, because the new version was staged and filmed at the former residence of Marquis Maeda in Komaba. The residence is a huge, western-style building that was erected in the early Showa Period, and the film of Yasumoto begins with a silent close-up of her naked feet walking on a red carpet. In the next shot the camera focuses on a tray with a tea bowl, carried by the dancer who wears a kimono with splashed patterns. Music starts in the moment Yasumoto puts the tray onto the floor, and she begins to dance out of the blue. The song is Shiina Ringo’s "Poltergeist", and what follows is a short yet highly concentrated scene of about four minutes.
Yasumoto is — or at least looks like — a maid who serves her master. From the moment she puts the tray down she begins to dance across the spacious villa, with the unconstrained and outrageous gestures of someone who isn't being seen by anybody. She lies down, stamps her feet, runs up the stairs to the second floor. She slips through a number of doors, from one wide room into another. She continues to dance with limbs stretched out, and runs to a window from which she can see herself in a garden that is bathed in light. The second Yasumoto pulls something (a brassiere?) out of the neck of her kimono, while the maid (?) closes the window, makes sure that nobody’s watching, lifts the bottom of her kimono, exposes her thighs, and dips her toes into the water in the tea bowl. Then she begins to dance even more energetically, and returns to the top of the staircase. She places one end of her belt in the cameraman’s hand, and descends the stairs in while spinning round and round, so that her belt unwinds. Then, just in the moment when the belt is about to open and fall down, the dancer flies off out of the window…
When seeing the piece I thought of Runa Islam’s video "Room Service" (2001), which is probably because the plot is similar. "Room Service" tells the fantastic story of two maids at a luxurious hotel who slumber in the beds of a vacant suite, and enjoy a dainty breakfast. With Yasumoto’s Maeda piece it shares the upper-class kind of atmosphere, the indoor setting, the small number of characters, and the immoral touch of acting in the absence of the master or hotel guest. Needless to say, both pieces are characterized by a calculated sort of eroticism. The only, crucial difference is the direction of the "freedom". While the two maids in "Room Service" lock themselves up in the room and stay there, and seek freedom only in their own imagination, Yasumoto’s "maid" looks and eventually exits through the window, so her freedom is real. She stretches her limbs like the branches of a tree that thirst after light, and experiences the most liberating feeling when her belt loosens.
What expresses and emphasizes this visually are certainly the residence’s many windows. Windows are of course portals to let air and light in and out, and in the Maeda version of Yasumoto’s piece there are countless scenes showing brightly lit windowpanes. Perhaps it’s the other way round: Yasumoto came up with the piece’s concept and choreography just because everything was to take place in a villa with dozens of windows. Or, she had the idea first and then selected the most appropriate location? Anyway, in the sense that this piece could only be realized and completed at that particular place, it was a genuinely site-specific dance piece. Dancing with fingers and toes stretched out is one of Yasumoto Masako’s specialties, so for her (and this piece in particular) the Maeda residence must have been the ideal stage.
What I also want to point out is the fact that the dancer, Yasumoto Masako is the only character that appears in the movie. "Sure, she’s the only dancer in the piece" you might say, but it’s only because nobody else appears that the themes of master-servant relationship, immorality and sensuality, and freedom can come into effect. I don't think that would be possible if the piece was shown in front of large audiences at a theatre or hall. And if they wanted to stage it by all means, I suppose placing partition walls in front of the stage and forcing the audience to peep through holes would be the only way how it might work. But in fact, peeping is surely the most appropriate way to apreciate imagery media (I'm not talking about peep shows here). Only once in the piece, Yasumoto has included a scene where the otherwise one-way relationship of peeping/being peeped at is reversed: the moment when she lets the cameraman hold the end of her belt. The cameraman represents the viewer, and his eyes are our eyes. Only in that one brief moment we can enjoy a vague and elusive sense of communion with the dancer as her accomplice.
The moment Yasumoto leaps out of the window marks the end of the dance, and at the same time the music stops too. If you remember how the dance began, you'll see the piece’s symmetric structure. The viewer feels like shouting at the maid (dancer), "don't go, don't stop the dance!", and experiences a slightly lonely, catharsis-like sensation when she breaks free in the end. In an interview at the end of the program, Yasumoto explained the following: "I want to take dance somewhere beyond choreography, to some unknown place. That’s what I feel." The place her fingers are pointing at is "outside". "Happy Dance — Cute Japanese Dance of Today" was a program that more than reflected the thoughts of a dancer/choreographer who is heading for "some unknown place". It was a piece of excellent dance, and an excellent film.
The program will be broadcast again on 12/9, 5:10 (Vol.2) and 13:00 (Vol.1), and on 2/2, 1:50 (Vol. 1) and 4:09 (Vol.2).
http://www.wowow.co.jp/
Ozaki Tetsuya / Editor in chief / REALTOKYO