Igniting the imagination

Published on November 14, 2007

My fourth evening at the Melbourne International Arts Festival took me back to the Arts Centre, the festival's hub.

But this time it was Hamer Hall, a three-level, acoustically perfect and architecturally remarkable auditorium, painted in the colours and patterns of Australian minerals and gems.

Singer and multimedia artist Laurie Anderson is famous for her 1981 hit "O Superman".

Having watched her solo performance "The End of the Moon" two years ago - the fruit of her experience as Nasa's first artist-in-residence - it's an easy decision to buy a ticket for "Homeland", her new work, inspired by the so-called War on Terror.

Now touring Europe, "Homeland" is more than a concert; it's a musical performance by a virtuoso who's a poet, an activist, a filmmaker, photographer, instrumentalist, vocalist and composer. Poignant and thoroughly provoking with politically charged lyrics and spoken-word passages, it doesn't fail to entertain, either.

Although the subject matter is predominantly American, its nuances are universal. In an electronic composition for violin, viola, keyboards and bass, Anderson delivers a message that most soldiers killing one another in wars today are teenagers, and many American college students enlist in the army because they want college scholarships - they wouldn't be able to afford the tuition fees otherwise.

In another, Anderson utters, "Only the expert knows what the problems are. Only the expert gets the Nobel Prize", and the house roars with laughter.

Apart from "Homeland", the festival showcases other works by Anderson. For example, her film "Hidden Inside Mountains" is shown daily at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image in nearby Federation Square.

Also at the festival is the world-renowned Paris-based butoh company Sankai Juku performed "Kagemi: Beyond the Metaphors of Mirrors", making their Melbourne debut at the Arts Centre State Theatre.

The modern Japanese art of butoh, or "the dance of darkness", is famous - notorious, in fact - for the extremely slow and meticulously controlled contortions of its white-powdered, shaven-headed dancers.

In Japanese, Kage means shadow,  Mi, seeing and being seen. "Some                 say the word Kagemi is the ancient              origin of 'mirror'," writes Ushio Amagatsu, the director, choreographer and designer.

There were few colours in this enchanting performance - the white moving bodies set against a stark black backdrop.

And yet, when the audience spotted a colour - like the small red lines on performers' faces - we discovered new meanings.

Likewise, while the dancers were almost always emotionless, when they did show their emotions through facial expressions here and there, the impact was immense.

In the eyes of Europeans and Americans, butoh is an image of post-World War II Japan. In this reviewer's perception, moments in "Kagemi" offer a rare opportunity to really concentrate on the here and now - reminiscent of those five-minute, pre-class meditation exercises in primary school.

A casually dressed elderly woman sitting next to me on the opening night dozed off during a few scenes. It didn't dampen her enjoyment - she said afterwards that it was "the most beautiful thing I've ever seen on stage".

As an English-major student in university days, I took more poetry than prose, simply because I didn't like to carry around all those doorstops - or have to spend the hours it took to wade through them.

Now, 20 kilograms later, I prefer stage productions, whose creators have faith that the less they show to an audience, the more we make of it through the power of our own imaginations.

Laurie Anderson's official website is www.laurieanderson.com. To learn more about one of the best butoh companies in the world, click to www.sankaijuku.com.

Bangkok gets its own dose of butoh tomorrow and Friday with Patravadi Theatre hosting Ko Murobushi's solo work "Quick Silver". Tickets are Bt500 (Bt200 for students). Information at (02) 412 7287-8, or visit www.patravaditheatre.com.

The writer can be contacted at Pawit.M@chula.ac.th.

Pawit Mahasarinand

The Nation