Sankai Juku on ice. 02/13/08

So last night I braved the roads and drove down to the kennedy center to see Sankai Juku for me it was the 4th time in the past 12 years I've seen them, for my girlfriend the first. Fortunately, there wasn't a repeat of the tragedy that happened to them in fall of 1985 where a performer, Yoshiuki Takada died during a show*

The roads conspired against us and we probably missed about the first 20 minutes of the hour and a half performance
but what I saw of their resurrection of Kinkan Shonen, The Kumquat Seed "A Young Boy’s Dream of the Origins of Life and Death" was sublime. Though no words, no text imbibe the work, tears flow attachments are made and broken, and a waking dream emerges.

The first time I saw them, I had waited 3 years, and one might think nothing could match the expectation or longing of that period of delay. But like now, they somehow deliver performances that cross oceans, cultures and I'd imagine even planets to create significance in something as average as dust. There was pleasure and pain, violence and maybe sex? love and hate, comedy and boredom, and pauses, long glacial pauses that I rarely see in western performances. Like traffic on the way to the show.


By the time you've seen this you probably already missed seeing them, but they come around about every three years
and meanwhile checkout youtube or http://www.sankaijuku.com/info_e.htm ...

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