Sankai Juku, 11/14/2006

Mirror, mirror, on the wall, these are the fairest of them all.



Sankai Juku
Kagemi: Beyond the Metaphors of Mirrors
Presented by SF Performances & Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
Performed at YBCA Forum
November 14, 2006

Butoh is more than dance; it incorporates theater and a feeling of meditation, which transforms one from being a passive audience member to a spiritually active one. Seeing Sankai Juku’s Kagemi: Beyond the Metaphors of Mirrors on Tuesday night, I truly felt transformed in both body and spirit. Entering Yerba Buena Center for the Arts’ Forum, my date and I were awestruck by the softly lit, life-size white lilies floating effortlessly onstage above a creamy white platform. In fact, I grew quite giddy trying to count them before the show, finally settling on a number roughly in the range of many several dozen or more-than-50-less-than-80. At the same time, faint music trickled in through the speakers and the glow from the flowers’ outlines created a calming pattern of dark circles on stage, transporting me to a cream-colored Japanese-influence version of Disney’s Fantasia...

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Photo by Sankai Juku