DANCE REVIEW : Keiko Fujii in ‘Yamato’

Against scenic panels that seem to be made of beaten brass, 11 members of the Keiko Fujii Dance Company of Japan are executing stale jazz-dance combinations to a New Age bossa nova. They wear pink gauze kimono tops and oversized silver jodhpurs. Their makeup and hair styles are likewise highly au courant-- but how their actions or appearance relate to “the ethical codes, the obedience of the female and the feudalism of premodern Japan” (the synopsis in the program) is anybody’s guess.

This is “Yamato,” a full-evening Fujii creation in which the conceptual labels applied to the dances stubbornly refuse to adhere, in which the history of Japan becomes reduced to a pretentious fashion show and in which three or four major dance idioms are fluently cheapened.

In her native Osaka, Fujii directs Studio K, a training center for ballet, modern and jazz dance. Indeed, there were times during the performance of “Yamato,” Tuesday at the Japan America Theatre, when the nine-part pseudo-historical work seemed primarily a graduation exam in these disciplines.

Some sections bristled with flexed feet, torso contractions and even images familiar from American modern dance (the elastic cat’s cradles from Alwin Nikolais’ “Tensile Involvement,” for example). Elsewhere, you could find toe shoes and even (in one of Fujii’s own solos) those spectacular turns a la seconde, with hops on the working leg, that only Mikhail Baryshnikov used to be able to do. Fujii herself is an accomplished technician.

Her hard-working, all-woman company didn’t always give Fujii what she wanted, however. The final group balances in extension proved disastrous. But better dancing wouldn’t have lent “Yamato” the depth, coherence and originality it lacked. These virtues obviously aren’t on the syllabus at Studio K and can’t even be bought for the prodigious production budget that “Yamato” squandered.

Telling the story of one culture through another culture’s art is a daunting challenge, but Fujii’s string of etudes--so obvious in their movement ideas and influences, yet so inept at conveying their announced social and historical themes--didn’t even qualify as a worthy attempt.

Yes, she did occasionally come up with promising nuggets of motion--those slow, smooth corps movements in the opening section, for instance, that suddenly yielded to quick, sharp gestural punctuations. But such concepts never went anywhere, annihilated by Fujii’s taste for flashy, empty juxtapositions, diversionary special effects (billowing smoke, cascading glitter) and mindless luxury.

Composed by John Kaizan Neptune, and played live, upstage, by the six-member Tokyosphere ensemble, the score for “Yamato” proved just as eclectic as the choreography, but more artfully developed. Ikuyo Shimada designed the imposing set and Shoji Fukuda gave it great textural and coloristic variety through his lighting. Fujii and Hideko Sugai were responsible for the costumes.