U-BU-SU-NA

Choreographed by Kujirai Kentaro
Dancers: Kujirai Kentaro, Sadakata Makoto, Noguchi Izumi, Kanamori Hirohisa

The Coronet Theatre
(14-16 November 2024)

Review by Alice Baldock

Snowstorms, isolation, and the icy bite of winter permeate the world of U-BU-SU-NA, a very old word meaning ‘the mystical divine power that protects the land and those who live there’, and the title of this piece presented by butoh dancer and choreographer Kujirai Kentaro. Butoh is an avant-garde dance form, co-created by a group of dancers in 1950s Japan. At the centre of the dance is the notion of transformation; the ability and potential of any body to become any thing. The Coronet Theatre has a long record of programming performances of Japanese culture, staging the ‘Electric Japan’ festival in 2022; this piece is a welcome addition to that legacy. 

In U-BU-SU-NA, the audience is taken through countless transforming worlds in the space of an hour (an hour that passes in a flash): at one point dancers seem to be battling against wind and snow, in another perhaps sitting in a cozy room on a winter’s night, yet another still a comic and humorous world in which one dancer is rolled across the room by another wielding a broom. These varied and mutating worlds give an insight into some of Kujirai’s stated visions for this piece: to interrogate the tension between contemporary, urban Japan, and his heritage.

This includes focusing on Tohoku, birth his birthplace and in some ways one of the key places informing the development of butoh: one of the landmark works of the first decades of butoh is Kamaitachi, a photobook of scenes from Akita, Tohoku, around the theme of a yokai, or monster, that would cut the ankles of people working in the fields. In the 1980s, dancers created the Tohoku Kabuki Project, choreographed by dancer Hijikata Tatsumi. Parts of Tohoku spend a good portion of each year snowed under, something which is reflected on by two dancers, Hijikata Tatsumi and Motofuji Akiko. In 1985, Hijikata wrote an essay called Wind Daruma about Tohoku:

“[…] in all of the Tohoku district, there's something called a "wind daruma."' I'd better explain this a bit. Sometimes when it gusts up north, the snow swirls around and the wind is just incredible. Then a Tohoku person can get wrapped in the wind that blows from the footpath between the rice paddies to my front door and, garbed in the wind, become a wind daruma standing at the entrance.” (Hijikata Tatsumi, Wind Daruma. Translation in The Drama Review vol. 44, no. 1 (Spring 2000)

Motofuji Akiko, meanwhile, dedicated a section of her memoir to the Tohoku town Akita’s snowy climate, and argues for its importance to butoh as Hijikata’s birthplace, saying that because otherwise snow would enter people’s mouths, they would shorten words, and that movements based off those shortened words has the qualities of a lightning flash, black earth, puffs of snow, and so on (Motofuji Akiko, Hijikata Tatsumi to tomo ni, 1990). These qualities came through in the dancers of U-BU-SU-NA, as well as their costumes created by KMRii and C.R.O.W design lab. Each piece of clothing seems to be covered in powdery snow, which moves alongside the dancers own movements, oscillating between rapid and serene. At one moment all dancers seem to be moving toward something, battling through imagined wind and snow that is almost tangible in the strength of their movements.

The most striking part of this arresting performance is how high the movement quality of every dancer is – each has an exacting command of their motion, their pace, and their use of space. A particularly standout performance was given by Noguchi Izumi, whose movements were in many places more subtle than her co-dancers, yet filled to the brim with details. Her movements were supple and fluid; in one exit she seems to undulate towards the back of the room without even taking a human step.

The music, a collaboration with sound artist and composer Fujita, and Nakasato Kota, takes audiences on a rollercoaster between clipped, urban, metallic screams and the serenity of birdsong and music that captures the essence of starlight (alongside the lighting design by Yoshida Kazuya). Dancers moved sometimes in harmony with this soundtrack and other times at a discord, highlighting an unease and tension between the nature and culture that Kujirai Kentaro wishes to draw attention to.

Overall, U-BU-SU-NA is a fantastic piece of dance and performance: costume, lighting, sound, and most importantly movement coalesce into a brief, but lingering, insight into worlds of tension, humour, and tranquillity.