A big thanks goes to Alison for proofreading.
NB: This show is VERY different from past ones, so if you prefer discovering it by yourself, refrain from reading.
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I have seen Kodo in
concert four times since 2007 – three times in North America and once in Japan
(last December’s One Earth Tour)– prior
to this year’s 伝説-Legend. I thought that,
by now, I knew what to expect from a Kodo show, yet I realized I was wrong.
Over the last year, Kodo has undergone significant internal restructuring that
has seen a shift of artistic responsibilities within the organization of the
group. Most notably, and after a few outstanding collaborations with Kodo (One Earth Tour Special (2003), Amaterasu (2006), Dadan (2009)), kabuki legend Tamasaburo Bando has become Kodo’s
full-time artistic director. In this context, I was very excited about Kodo’s
latest work. Following are some of my thoughts on the show.
The very first “scene”
(a new composition by Bando, “Kaden”) announces a totally different kind of
presentation. On-stage we see a group of four performers playing flute around a
bonfire (created through the use of light, of course). There are also dancers,
and, further back, two half-moon-shaped sets of roughly ten taiko plus a timpani
each. Gone is Kodo’s traditional happi
(which only appeared in the second half of the show). Even more striking is the
fact that the flutes are not playing any recognizable Kodo or even Japanese melody,
but rather “El condor pasa”, a Peruvian song based on Andean traditional music.
Kodo’s past is filled
with world music experiments and international collaborations that have sadly,
as far as I know, rarely seen the stage outside of Earth Celebration. If “El
condor pasa” is a hint of Kodo starting to explore world music as part of their
annual concerts, they have an extremely rich well to draw from.
As the performance unfolds,
we appreciate the most impactful feature of Kodo’s new presentation: the use of
space. Bando’s stage sensibilities seem to be his most compelling contribution
to the group. The drums, for example, are set in such a way that they shape the
movement of the performers as they raise their arms to strike them and as they
rotate positions. Space takes on new meaning as dancers perform “Sado Okesa” at
the back of the stage under different lighting, while others play “Monochrome”
in the front. Drum changes are minimized (even if it means keeping some on
stage that will not be used) and the players are highlighted, becoming actors
that inhabit the space of the stage. As a whole, the concert evolves in a much more
organic, narrative way. This flow made me lose myself in the ‘story’, so to
speak, to the point that before I knew it the concert was over.
Much in the same way,
the musical space becomes three-dimensional as well. Moments of cacophony give
new significance to those of harmony. Different melodies and rhythms blend into
each other as we move from one space to another, from one song to the next.
In true narrative
fashion, the concert finishes by taking us back to the beginning through the
repetition of the melody of “El condor pasa”. If anything, I would say that the
encore felt slightly underwhelming, removed from the rest of the performance.
Of course, an encore always comes after
the end of a show, but it did not seem to flow from everything that had come
before, especially considering how cohesive the whole had been up until then.
To put it in other words, it felt as if they had taken the encore from a
pre-Bando concert and used it for this one. Or, it may also be that after the pitch-perfect encore for the Bando-directed One
Earth Tour Special I’ve simply become too demanding.
All in all, I see 伝説-Legend as a very refreshing, meaningful and exciting
new step in the artistic evolution of Kodo, whose new approach seems to be
based not so much on the adaptation of the ancient tradition of taiko to the
stage, but more importantly on a reinterpretation of it. If this is only the
beginning of the Bando era, the next work cannot come soon enough for me.
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