Kazuco Takemoto
Takemoto first trained in Japan, then in New York, then returned to Japan to perform. Her dance technique is Western, incorporating Graham and Limon release techniques, classical ballet, mime, and something called “modern ballet,” an English term for the early results of Japan’s grappling with ballet, beginning in the late 40s. But butoh–which Takemoto asserts cannot be understood as a single entity–has no real voice in her work, which is not about shadows but about the full experience of the moment.
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The garden in Song of Memory is not a Japanese garden, nor an English one. It’s a garden of the mind, suggested by artistic elements drawn from throughout the world and joined in a recognizable reality. Together Takemoto and her collaborators–lighting designer Hisashi Adachi (whose lucid work was the best thing about Uno Man’s performance the previous week); costume designer Rumiko Homma, who walks a fine line between elegant fixed images and fabric to be trashed in performance; and sound designer Kyoko Yamada, whose subtle interweaving of disparate styles as well as live and recorded music creates an air of delicacy–demonstrate what may be most Japanese about this work: it’s an exemplar of Japan’s sophisticated grasp of the global. In the global context Takemoto is a pacesetter–and it’s her individual spirit, not an agenda, that’s setting the pace.
