It’s always a challenge to write about a performer like Hiroaki Umeda, one whose performances embody a beautifully complex and challenging aesthetic through the utmost degrees of simplicity. The New York premiere of Adapting for Distortion at the Japan Society begins with points of white light. At first they are barely discernible, but as more and more begin to appear, they form a gestalt horizontal line. Then two, then ten, until we begin to see a pattern. Then, just as the audience grows into the rhythm and comfort of the performance: loud static.
The next half hour is nothing short of a mind-blowing manipulation of light, sound, and, of course, Umeda’s body. Not only is Umeda the performer and choreographer, but the designer of the entire piece; this fact shows itself beautifully, never before have I seen such an integrated design, one that disturbs, jolts, and mysteriously flows all at once. The flow is felt viscerally, as each element seems to directly link to each other. The lights determine the movement of the body, the sounds the lights, the body the lights, the lights the body—they are, for lack of a better term, an organic whole.
When breakthrough designers such as Adolphe Appia envisioned a new gesamptkunstwerk, a total work of art, technology seemed inadequate to furnish the idea forth. But Umeda makes use of computerized and digital technologies to realize this beauty of noise. Indeed, the lighting projection is fairly crude; at its most figurative, it seems a Tron-like digi-scape, while the sound is more disturbance than music, noise over melody. And to be sure, none of this etracts from Umeda’s skill as a dancer, integrating modern and hip-hop to become a piece of the performance machine. Somehow Umeda makes it all work together.
Perhaps most brilliantly is Umeda’s consideration not only of design space, but time. Throughout a good half of the piece, Umeda is barely moving, with some of the most breathtaking moments being those of reprieve, and quiet for both performer and audience. The white grid projection subtly pulsates as Umeda breathes in the interim, giving way to another manic movement, sometimes wholly unbearable with overwhelming decibel levels and epilepsy-inducing flashes of light. These violent thrusts of the performance are intricately plotted, so when, for a split second, the projection gives way to a flash of white light, it’s shocking to see Umeda—his face, his clothes, his body—I’ve forgotten that the man can be separate from the movement.
And it is in these two moments, respite and momentary shock, where Umeda’s performance is epitomized: jaw-dropping, beautiful, and over all-too-briefly.
Comments