フェスティバル/トーキョー FESTIVAL/TOKYO

The F/T Emerging Artists Program greatly expanded in 2011, opening its gates for the first time to the rest of Asia and receiving some eighty applications. The final Program consisted of four international and seven domestic groups; the first thing to be recognized at the launch of any discussion is that it was likely the part of the Festival this year with the highest risk and also a real cultural investment.

Whatever the individuality of the participating productions, sadly we just cannot expect the work of young Asian theatre artists unknown in Japan to be crowd-pullers. The aim then, inevitably, cannot but be directed to the future over the present. Accordingly, what this Program must confront is to think of itself as the performing arts and society of the future. The work of the eleven companies and artists were as a whole without question ambitious and thought-provoking, but limiting the issues only to that then reduces the Program's significance.

 

For example, Pijin Neji's "the acting motivation" was the best work and was blessed with the inaugural F/T Award. And yet, in an extreme case, we cannot feel that this in itself is not a large problem for the Program. Rather, including as it does a Judge from overseas (for 2011's Program, Professor Hans-Thies Lehmann), realizing a project such as the F/T Award can surely be said to be at the core of the Emerging Artists Program's aspirations for the future. The theatre works created out of the context of Japanese shogekijo fringe theatre - archetypally, Pure BANANA girls class and lolo - along with the work of their contemporary Asian practitioners, bombarded audiences with their continually forming "contextuality". For the judging jury, composed mostly of critics raised in the context of western drama of the twentieth century, witnessing this was the rough outline for this year.

 

Further, a parallel program took place, the Critics in Residence project, which saw many leading critics and journalists from all over Asian invited to the Festival. That their witnessing of this theatrical spectacle can be thought of as forming the backbone of a platform for the future will surely have few detractors. These plans, however they turned out in the end, created a program that got off to a flying start and surely reaped this year's greatest artistic harvest. At present it is still at the final count just a "structure". The problem, thus, is what lies ahead.

 

It goes without saying that this is not the first time that Japanese contemporary theatre has had its sights set on interchange with the rest of Asia. Makoto Sato's Black Tent (Kuro-tento) raised the cause of "Asian Theatre" in the late Seventies, and the strong network-building that took place after that and in the post-Nineties international collaborations realized by the Japan Foundation are all fresh in the mind. The grassroots connections continued by such venues as Shinjuku's Tiny Alice and Dance Box (now in Kobe) have also produced a certain level of results. On top of this record, the new pages that the F/T Emerging Artists Program can add will surely hinge on the kind of historical awareness that the Festival possesses. On questions such as: What is "Asia"? What are "performing arts" today? What should an "international performing arts festival" be doing?

 

2011 was the year of the Great East Japan Earthquake in March, but also the year when China's GDP overtook Japan's, and when the Arab Spring swept through North Africa and the Middle East. In the Asia of the digital era and low-cost airline carriers the scale of transition between people and information is now expanding more and more. With the rise of Chine and India, the twenty-first century "Asia" differs from the "Asia" of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and will become much more than only the imagined vision of the Orient drawn by the West. However, at the same time this world is undeniably still in the midst of global capitalism, and with the numerous social strains spawned by this being shared thus globally. This situation has certainly existed latently since the Seventies, and through the anticipated flux caused by the planned regime change in multiple key countries, from 2012 it will surely come more and more to the surface.

 

This of course could be said by just about anyone. The problem is the currently undeniably total insufficiency of the necessary intellectual infrastructure for shaping and constructing new dialogue regarding the changes in this situation. As one example, recently dancer Setsuko Yamada was the main host of a performance, symposium and workshop on the tradition-transcending work of Maeja Kim at the Kyoto Performing Arts Center, Kyoto University of Art and Design. As is already well known, Kim has been a leader of the Korean dance scene since the Seventies, preeminent in dissecting traditional dance techniques and psyche in Korea, while also continuing to create a unique contemporary artistry. What hit home at this program was how ignorant I myself was of her achievements and career, and that in the first place the nuance in the term "tradition" in the performing arts decisively differed in Korea and Japan. The meaning expressed in the words "Korean dance" and "Japanese dance" is utterly divergent, and while today "Japanese dance" (Nihon buyou) simply denotes the classical body of schools and styles, in Korea with the phrase there is a re-validation from present perspectives of the hoard of various physical techniques from differing origins, including court dancing, Buddhist dance and Shamanism. The consciousness of the "tradition" thus is the connection to the here and now that includes the historical memory of all this accumulation. Comprehending this concept and further, as long as dialogue on the history of the territories differing in this way does not build up, in the frame of "international interchange" we will forever be unable to go beyond merely elementary steps. Not improbably, this underlying issue for the future is grave enough to take up the entire duration of the F/T Symposium talks.

 

The limits of interchange between the performing arts of "Japan" and mainland "Asia" up till now have eventually been anchored only at the creatively referential level. The cutting edge lies in western theatre, and it is to be seriously studied and its influence taken on: This concept is in some ways clearly defined as a target and thus easy to understand. However, genuine interchange in the performing arts requires a situation where creative influences are received and exchanged on both sides. (In this way, as an instance of cultural misunderstanding, we cannot ignore how Artaud took his defining inspiration from Balinese dance in the historical context of the Thirties.) The world of the twenty-first century is developing in the medium and long-term more and more as a multipolar and fluid society. In this landscape the simplistic notion of a "west" looking "east" to gain something, and vice versa, holds no currency anymore. If there are no national boundaries in the arts, intellectuality is necessary for dialogue that can exchange inspirations across borders. In the Asian region, including Japan, that intellect is currently completely undeveloped. Thus the task from now, including that of the F/T Emerging Artists Program, is precisely to overcome this situation.

 

Out of the eleven productions staged this year, the ones that left the largest impression on me personally were two from Korea. "Oil Pressure Vibrator" by Geumhyung Jeong was probably not a work with the power to put pressure on others but, in the male-centric society that likely continues to dominate today, that such a piece from a female artist dealing with gender and sexuality could be concretely created in the first place can be considered proof that clearly something is now happening in Korea.

 

Jaeduk Kim's "Joker's Blues" not only possessed the stand-out physicality of Pilseung Lee, but beside the young singers displaying the overwhelming power of pansori another singer added a layer of blues vocals, an experiment in which we could feel a hint of that necessary intellectuality. What can be born from attempting such a combination of the latent capabilities in the musicality of a non-western form like pansori, with the possibilities of the blues, which, while originally a work song for black people, was formed out of the undercurrents of modern commercial pop music via jazz and rock. That a twenty-seven year old artist can easily carry this kind of experiment through is not only an issue of his individual capabilities, but that the Korean performing arts have provided the intellectual infrastructure inducing such an endeavor.

 

After Pijin Neji's performance, the most acclaimed work was Takuya Murakawa's "Zeitgeber", and I certainly hope that within the next five years he now produces something overseas moving away from Japanese subject matters. His documentary film intellectual tradition currently relativizes a context of "Japan" but surely will also be able to reveal perspectives directly confronting the rest of the world.