SINGAPORE — Wait, did we just get prayed over at SIFA?

That’s highly possible, what with a man wearing a black old-man mask, brandishing his golden bells (erm, literally, okay) and shaking them at the audience, occasionally stomping his feet to the whoops and yelps and hypnotic flute-and-drums rhythms of some stern-looking musicians.

After which, they all slowly and purposefully exit — no curtain call, thank you very much.

It might have been presented inside a theatre, but that small detail puts you firmly in the mindset of witnessing a ceremony. Sambaso, after all, is a traditional Shinto harvest ritual that is rooted in a divine myth of gods descending to earth. It is also a performance that bridges the two traditional Japanese theatre forms of Kyogen and Noh (aka the haha-earthy and the serious-reverent one, respectively).

But before we got into visual artist-director Hiroshi Sugimoto’s interpretation of this, we’re given a couple of samplers in what was, if you will, a kaiseki night: A medley of Noh music and a very funny Kyogen piece about two naughty servants and their attempts to drink their boss’ sake while he’s away. It’s about as slapstick comedy as you can get in traditional Japan, I guess. Pretty fun stuff.

And then you’re all set for the main course.

Like the Lin Hwai-min/Cai Guo-qiang collaboration Wind Shadow a few fest editions back, you’ve got Sugimoto teaming up with revered actor Mansaku Nomura (a Japanese Living National Treasure) and son Mansai. They swap performances in Sambaso’s two-night run and we caught the elder one doing Sambaso and Mansai doing the Kyogen last night.

I’m currently in one of my Japan moods (what with the movie Rurouni Kenshin: Kyoto Inferno out and, by sheer coincidence, being halfway through the book Musashi) so this was pretty cool for me — even if the Sambaso portion didn’t have surtitles.

Or was that a nudge-wink to that recent spat between Lianhe Zaobao and The Straits Times’ Fest Pest about surtitles?

Anyway, much of it seems too culturally specific, and I’m quite hesitant to “assess” something as traditional as this, especially as it’s performed by someone of such stature as Nomura. But I’d also like to think that its aesthetic appeal can be universal. It’s not as if it’s like those excerpted kabuki shows tourists queue up for in Tokyo — for one, you had Sugimoto’s visually captivating curtains that featured luminous lightning motifs (or extended tree roots), lifting the performance to a place that’s not in the past. Nomura himself embodies this lightning, printed on his traditional garb. I didn’t know what exactly was happening but I do know that at some point, something eventually clicked and I was mesmerised.

Music, theatre, dance and visual art — it was a four-for-one packaged night. I left thinking, for whatever reason, whether it’s linguistic or cultural, it can be argued that there’s virtue in a piece of art that doesn’t readily give away its secrets. For me, Sambaso was one such work.

Now if only I knew if I’d been truly blessed to have witnessed it.

Sambaso is sold out. For more info on the festival, visit https://sifa.sg/