DANCE REVIEW : Sankai Juku’s ‘Kinkan Shonen’

Butoh, the starkly elemental Japanese art of white-powdered bodies moving at tortoise speed, takes on a surprising aural intensity in Sankai Juku’s “Kinkan Shonen” (The Kumquat Seed), performed Thursday night in University Theatre at Cal State Long Beach.

The 1978 work by Ushio Amagatsu, subtitled “A Young Boy’s Dream of the Origin of Life and Death,” opens with a figure in schoolboy attire slowly leaning this way and that, accompanied by a soft, tentative beeping sound.

Falling abruptly on his back, he writhes in a scattering of birdseed. Rising, he moves an extended arm with the dry weightlessness of a leaf in the wind. A pulley contraption emits increasingly louder noises with a nasty, bullying edge as the open-mouthed boy essays dreamy calisthenics.

Loud rock music invades a “ritual” section in which chalky bodies in matted skirts enlarge tiny wrist spasms into insistent gyrations with buttocks provocatively bared. A live peacock wanders through subsequent scenes to the bright, dense sound of insects and running water--a piquant contrast of random activity with the taut control of the performers.

A skirl of bagpipes introduces a dwarfish fellow who smiles and bobs his head with dumb delight, a creature eventually transformed into a female figure silently babbling and kicking up clouds of birdseed. Alas, interludes of easy-listening music foolishly undercut the dramatic power of the final scenes.

Moving north to Westwood next week, Sankai Juku will perform “Kinkan Shonen” in Royce Hall at UCLA from Tuesday through Saturday nights.