Above: from Makiko Tamura's TANK, photo by Kokyat. Click on each image to enlarge.
Kokyat and I attended the dress rehearsal of Makiko Tamura/small apple co.'s programme at Joyce SoHo; I had expected to also attend their opening night performance but the MTA was un-cooperative and I found myself sitting on a train way uptown when I should have been in SoHo.
TANK is a darkly luminous work for three dancers set among metal-frame geometric constructions. The dancers move in and out of these structures, each finding their own space for a while and then moving on. The set pieces themselves are also moved about, or taken apart and re-built.
The movement is slow and the dancers seem wary of one another; relationships are implied but the overall feeling of the piece is one of solitude.
Each dancer has a solo passage: Asami Morita (above) moves fitfully in a coffin-like chamber.
Michael Ingle
Ryoji Sasamoto
Observing: Asami Morita, Ryoji Sasamoto and Michael Ingle in TANK.
Opening the evening, Makiko Tamura and Ryoji Sasamoto (above) appeared in her 2009 work up and down. For this domestic vignette, the space is strewn with clothing left in disarray...
...as the insomniac Ms Tamura puts a record on the turntable, Mr. Sasamoto awakens. The couple, who seem estranged but perhaps seeking to reconcile, move as in a quiet dream while articles of clothing rise and fall as if by magic. Their duet seemed filled with a longing for some elusive past happiness. Later they are mesmerized by the pulsing glow of a night-light.
Makiko Tamura and Ryoji Sasamoto in up and down.
All images by Kokyat.