Vangeline Theater Presents ELSEWHERE Review- Beautiful and Terrifying

At some point she must have started to move. The lights, first shining on a hot red sun hanging at the back of the stage, take their time to reveal a figure - a woman wearing a long black dress from another time period, her hair pulled up in a polished bun. She is standing very still - for a very long time. There is a certain elegance and poise to her stillness. One would think that everything is just fine in this world, though the vibrating, abrasive soundscape suggests otherwise. It is a bold juxtaposition and we are transfixed.

At long last, the light hits her face differently and it becomes clear that something must have changed, she must have moved. Her moving with such nuance and control is eventually (but suddenly) contrasted with a sharp change in her level. Technically, she is probably merely bending her knees, but to us, the change is monumental. We are on the edge of our seats.

In ELSEWHERE, performed by Vangeline and composer, Yuka C. Honda, we never know what will happen next.

Vangeline Theater – an anomaly in Butoh world

Vangeline is a teacher, dancer and choreographer specializing in Butoh, the Japanese postwar avant-garde movement form. A French woman practicing Butoh, a typically male dominated field, Vangeline is a rarity who has even founded the New York Butoh Institute. Yuka C. Honda is a musician, producer, composer and performer originally from Tokyo. Honda has collaborated with the likes of Yoko Ono and Sean Lennon and is co-founder of the band, Cibo Matto. It’s no surprise that these incredibly skilled, innovative artists collaborate on a piece that celebrates the life of another courageous woman, Japanese performer Omoto Tannaker (1842-1916). The program states that “ELSEWHERE is a story of migration and cultural encounters and that with this piece they explore their roots while investigating the idea of shared space in performance”.

Honda sits at a table just off the left side of the stage. Though we can barely see her by the light of her laptop and keyboard set-up, there is an elegance in her own shifts of movement as she orchestrates the spectacular score. This improvised composition ranges from foreboding to frightening, to deafening, and then explodes into the cathartic before settling into a kind of reverie. The score serves as a powerful duet partner, beautifully demonstrating music as inner life. Butoh, as translated, means “dance of darkness”. Vangeline says “It is the realm of the hidden, of the subconscious, of things we usually don’t dare look at in ourselves and in others. Butoh reveals our deep humanity.”  Throughout the piece, the soundscape brings the darkness to the surface and foreshadows what is to come.