JapanOC Opening Event: Sankai Juku in its award-winning Butoh dance Hibiki: Resonance from Far Away at Irvine Barclay Theatre, Oct 30, 8:00 PM
Saturday, October 30, 8:00 p.m.
Irvine Barclay Theatre, 4242 Campus Drive, Irvine, CA 92612
(949) 854-4646
www.thebarclay.org
Tickets: $61, $46, $36
The JapanOC Festival begins with a mesmerizing performance of modern Japanese Butoh dance entitled Hibiki: Resonance from Far Away by the internationally acclaimed Japanese Butoh troupe Sankai Juku.
In this unique and award-winning Butoh, dancers use slow hyper-controlled motion to display powerful imagery.
Hibiki is one of Sankai Juku's award-winning works of unparalleled simplicity and poetic beauty. Performed in a dream landscape with whirling costumes, the company of six male dancers blends image, sound and performance to create a hypnotic dance experience.
Silence is interrupted by the sound of liquid dripping rhythmically from suspended glass urns into 13 concave glass lenses.
Dancers with shaved heads and covered in white body paint lie in the fetal position on the sand ground.
Under caramel lighting, they uncurl effortlessly and weave elemental movements into a delicate slow motion dance.
Clothed in draped gowns, dancers transform like statues of granite brought to life, pulsing through sand and shadow.
The dynamic interplay of large and small gestures, accompanied by a lyrical and electronic score by Takashi Kako and Yoichiro Yoshikawa, brings audiences into a chemical reaction of arts in the beautiful garden with sands and small water pools-cracking the kernel of the particular to liberate the universal.
Created by director, choreographer, designer and Sankai Juku founder Ushio Amagatsu, Hibiki first premiered at Théâtre de la Ville, Paris, in 1998, and received the Olivier Award for Best New Dance Production in 2002.
Supported by the Japan Foundation through the Performing Arts JAPAN program. Funded in part by the National Dance Project of the New England Foundation for the Arts, with lead funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and additional funding from the Ford Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the Community Connections Fund of the MetLife Foundation.
