"Faster" and "Carmina Burana” at New National Theater Tokyo

David Bentley - I've never had an opportunity to see his choreography. So I went to New National Theater Tokyo to see his pieces.

"Faster" is Bentley's recent work commemorating the 2012 London Olympics. It tuned out to be a disappointment. It lacks something to inspire audience. Moreover, dancers looked more like participating to a junior high school's athletic event than a dance on stage. As an audience, I was unable to create a relationship with what's going on on the stage, and as a result, I felt restless and uncomfortable (Why I'm here?) during the whole performance.

I was looking forward to the second piece, Camina Burana, although I didn't know much about the work except that it was accompanied by singing.

After the goddess of fate's dance at the very beginning, 3 female dancers in white long dresses　（liked the dress) appeared from the stage left. When they reached about the middle of the stage, I noticed their body lines were a bit weird. So I sat up in my seat and looked closely at around their waists. I realized the characters were all pregnant and in the eighth month at least. They sauntered along the laundry line stretching in the length of the stage and against the darkness of the background. Pregnant bodies dancing, which was totally unexpected but natural and interesting. That's when I wished there had been subtitles in Japanese for audiences.

A snapshot from the New National Theater Tokyo home page.

Counter tenor, Jun Hagiwara's voice was clear and beautiful. I have heard at least three counter tenors in San Francisco, but his was the best so far. I'm not sure whether or not he can project his voice sufficiently in the San Francisco Opera House, which is twice as big as New National, but I wish he would give a try to leap onto the world stage, by auditioning outside Japan.

Chorus was good. Their voices were young, energetic and straight-forward, but after for a while, it gets kind of boring. Monotonous. I felt exactly the same way, when I listened to "The Tale of Hoffman" a few months ago. The New National Theater Tokyo's chorus seemed to be lacking the depth and breadth of voices, which the SF Opera chorus is blessed to have. It may be because the SF Opera chorus doesn't have retirement policies. So the members can stay until they decide to leave. The US Constitution bans age discrimination except for special cases. Hence there's more diversity in voices in the SF chorus. It seems to be working as an advantage for them, allowing them to express human feelings in depth and breadth.

It's sad that Japan's age discrimination in job has some consequence for artistic expressions.

I learned from the video shown after the performance that Mr. Bentley had choreographed "Prince of Pagoda" for the New National Theater Ballet. The preview reminded me of Kenneth MacMillan so I'm interested in seeing the piece.