Arts & Entertainment A weekly guide to music, theater, art, movies and more, edited by Rebecca Wallace
A
A dance of
birth and
rebirth Japanese butoh troupe traces the circle of life in Bay Area premiere
Courtesy of Stanford Lively Arts
by Rebecca Wallace
Sankai Juku dancers perform the work “Tobari.”
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s artistic and executive director of Stanford Lively Arts, Jenny Bilfield regularly brings to town high-flying artists: top violinist Midori, for instance, or the Pulitzer Prize-winning composer John Adams. Some days are more down-to-eJ21 arth. Like when she worked with her technical director recently to choose the right kind of sand. The Japanese butoh dance troupe Sankai Juku is performing at Stanford University on Nov. 9, and its work “Tobari” calls for covering much of the Memorial Auditorium stage in sand. Bilfield and the director weighed (literally) a few possibilities, and ultimately chose a sand that was lighter and that would catch the light nicely. Now, in an interview, Bilfield laughs. “What do we do the day after with the sand?” It’s all in a day’s work, and all part of helping an artist create a specific vision on a local stage. The vision of “Tobari” is that of Ushio Amagatsu, who founded Sankai Juku in 1975 and is still artistic director, choreographer and designer, as well as a dancer with the company. Butoh, often translated as “dark soul dance,” is an avant-garde dance art form that came into being in Japan after World War II, when the country was struggling with defeat, occupation and westernization, former New York Newsday dance critic Janice Berman wrote in the Lively Arts program notes. (continued on next page)