Sankai Juku's Tobari--As If In An Inexhaustible Flux. Photo courtesy of The Esplanade.

The big buzz about their return to Singapore after 22 years, the palpable reverence accorded to a performance that rapt audiences watched in complete silence, the rapturous standing ovation—Sankai Juku could very well be the festival’s rock stars this year. If I had known earlier that everybody loved butoh, I would’ve campaigned for its inclusion in every single festival here. Judging by the amazing mix of audiences tonight, it seemed like this avant garde art form fascinates not only folks from the dance community but theatre and visual artists too. I bumped into Lee Wen before the show and it’s the third time he’s watching the group. So was the hype surrounding Tobari—As If In An Inexhaustible Flux deserved? Er, is the Pope Catholic? Of course, this was not of the bizarre butoh branch in its rather complicated family tree. It was beautiful butoh. An hour and a half of time slowing down into one cosmic trip that was simply, well, divine. Literally meaning curtain and used poetically to refer to dusk, Tobari is an almost spiritual experience of the Threshold and one of the closest I’ve witnessed the theatre stage transformed into something of a hallowed space. Throughout the piece’s seven scenes, director Ushio Amagatsu and his band of uniformly powder-white, robed botak boys are your veritable shamans, their unhurried, mesmerizing, ritualistic gestures echoing different histories and cultures, from ancient Egypt to the whirling dervishes of Turkey, from India to Indonesia. Their mouths occasionally agape signifying terror or joy, their limbs and fingers constantly weaving shapes but always highlighting a sense of verticality—they point up, they point down, they gesture skywards. Your eyes hungrily grasp these powerful, hypnotic movements as you think of the big things: of creation myths, the fall of man, of higher beings, of your place in the order of things. (Pushed along by the admittedly somewhat New Age-y type of music—although I thought I heard some guitar power chord chugging too, which was amusing and cool.) It can’t be helped. You are, after all, confronted by the universe: an amazing video wall of an outer space littered with stars, or a circle at the centre that lights up with stars, too, like some portal or scrying pool. Many would describe Tobari as transcendental, and I would readily agree. Once you enter the Tobari Zone, you're sucked in. That very last bit where they faced the “universe”, gesturing as if groping or climbing, was one that I really didn’t want to end. And when they bow during the curtain call—still in butoh fashion, slow and graceful—you feel like you’ve just spent that time in the presence of something big. Watching Tobari, I longed to be swallowed up by the universe. (Wah, so drama.)

***

A Motley Crew by Emilyn Claid as performed by LASALLE College Of The Arts students as part of Enthralled. Photo courtesy of The Esplanade. Meanwhile, there was the LASALLE College of the Arts dance show earlier tonight, which I also caught. Here’s the thing that I’ve belatedly realised with these annual school showcases at da:ns Fest: it’s more about highlighting the dancers than the choreographers. Which, I guess, is justified. Although I do find the idea of the students doing something Jerome Bel-ish pretty intriguing. “Okay kids, for your da:ns Fest piece, you’re just going to stand there and pick your nose.” Probably won't earn any plus points with sceptical parents. Anyway, back to Enthralled. For me, the four-in-one presentation was a pretty mixed bag. It’s probably because Tobari butoh-ed its way into my head that as I’m typing this and looking at my notes, I can’t seem to remember much about the second and fourth abstract pieces, Twice Seen by Yvonne Ng (and dancers) and Do You Remember… by Foo Yun Ying (and dancers)—although I do remember thinking a) there are some pretty good dancers are coming up and b) why is there only one dude? The third, Melissa Quek’s Valid(N)ation, an in-your-face music video-like commentary on the banality of office life,  somehow sticks to mind, primarily because of its repeated use of typing as movement that, despite transforming into a distracting gesture, eventually developed into a pointed manic physical tic near the end. (It also made me wonder how dance will be able to mine “everyday gestures” in this day and age when everyone’s plugged in and actually don’t move around much anymore. Heh.) All three of these seem cut from the same hyperactive, edgy cloth, which made the light-hearted treatment of the first stand out for me. Dedicated to choreographer Nigel Charnock, who died of cancer a couple of months ago, Emilyn Claid’s A Motley Crew has a quirky wistfulness about it that’s adorable. From the moment the dancers slowly file out in various poses like a freeze-framed reel of film to its sequences—the playful humour of the dancers hugging, their lightfooted stacatto movements, the poignant scene involving the sharing of hats (to an Antony And The Johnsons song)—before getting back in line for the exit, offered just enough of moment of homage.