Kinetic and playful Japanese contemporary dance about impact of earthquake
This article is from 2012.
There’s a spirit of playfulness underpinning this series of dance vignettes from Japanese company LAN-T003, all flavoured with an urban energy and a pulsing, kinetic style of movement that echoes both reptiles and robots.
The piece was written as an uplifting response to the earthquake that changed the lives of many of their country’s people, with the title translating as either ‘earthquake’ or ‘confidence’ in Japanese. The group certainly seem fascinated by the body’s response to a moment of fierce energy passing through it, sometimes working together like a multi-limbed bionic insect, flexing currents through one another’s chests and limbs, other times flinging the momentum more violently between each other, like a giant human Newton’s cradle.
Bits of Jishin feel bafflingly random; the interlude in the middle, for instance, where video scenes of interactions with pets are given live reconstructions on stage. But even these have the effect of passing the energy on, triggering as they do spontaneous bursts of laughter, something LAN-T003 describe as ‘an earthquake to the body.’
Zoo Southside, 662 6892, until 27 Aug (not 14 & 21), 8.35pm, £11.50 (£8).