"The Unknown Dancer in the Neighborhood"
Written and Directed by Suguru Yamamoto
Japan Society, New York
January 10, 2020
-- By Tom Phillips
Mayday! Mayday! Is a cry that comes up repeatedly in Suguru Yamamoto’s dance/drama “The Unknown Dancer in the Neighborhood.” It means “help me” in French, but it seems to fall on deaf ears in Tokyo, the setting for this theater piece by and for a new generation of Japanese artists.
Despairing dramas about alienated people were a staple of the last century. What makes this fresh is that it suggests alienation is actually the flip side of community. We feel disconnected only because we're connected.
“The Unknown Dancer” is a whole cast of characters, played by one brilliant young dancer-actor, Wataru Kitao, equally at home with hip-hop and ballet, in male and female roles, as a child or an old person, as a human being or an animal. The ability to cross so many lines is a feat of acting empathy – the very opposite of disconnecting.
Written and Directed by Suguru Yamamoto
Japan Society, New York
January 10, 2020
-- By Tom Phillips
| Wataru Kitao as the Unknown Dancer. |
Mayday! Mayday! Is a cry that comes up repeatedly in Suguru Yamamoto’s dance/drama “The Unknown Dancer in the Neighborhood.” It means “help me” in French, but it seems to fall on deaf ears in Tokyo, the setting for this theater piece by and for a new generation of Japanese artists.
Despairing dramas about alienated people were a staple of the last century. What makes this fresh is that it suggests alienation is actually the flip side of community. We feel disconnected only because we're connected.
“The Unknown Dancer” is a whole cast of characters, played by one brilliant young dancer-actor, Wataru Kitao, equally at home with hip-hop and ballet, in male and female roles, as a child or an old person, as a human being or an animal. The ability to cross so many lines is a feat of acting empathy – the very opposite of disconnecting.
