Dance and Music Reviews : Tradition, Artistry From Okinawa Co.

In the energized, hyper-physical world of dance theater, nothing expresses pain more deeply than remaining motionless. Whether it’s Albrecht bowing his head at Giselle’s grave or Rudy Perez sitting in a chair and smoking a cigarette, a rapt stillness can suspend time and give even the smallest gesture towering scale and eloquence.

Midway through an 18th-Century Okinawan court dance titled “Shudon,” dancer Hideko Tamagusuku reached such a moment at the Japan America Theatre on Saturday. Wearing a magnificent blue robe lined in scarlet and elaborately decorated with floral motifs, she seemed to wearily release all motion as if it were a burden and simply stand gazing into a hopeless void while vocal/instrumental music washed over her in a sustained sigh.

A passage in which she moved slowly toward the front of the stage, her left hand drawn up near her chin, conveyed the same contemplation-of-loss, but with the mastery of slow-motion walking steps and spare, formal gesture also found in “Nufwa-Bushi,” another bittersweet court solo danced by Setsuko Tamagusuku.

Leaders of a distinguished school and dynasty of Okinawan performance, Hideko and Setsuko Tamagusuku showcased their artistry as part of a tour program marking the 20th anniversary of Okinawa’s reversion to Japanese rule. Besides their court dances, the evening included examples of folk and theater idioms and a karate demonstration.

The group dances “Tanchame” and “Mamidoma” celebrated work activities, with the use of oars in the former and hoes in the latter helping define the emphasis on fishing versus farming. Women danced both male and female roles here and throughout the program, but masculinity sometimes amounted to nothing more than the cut of the dancers’ clothes or how high they held their feet in the air.

The muscular force of Hideko Takeda and Masafumi Miyagi in the karate solos and so-called “prearranged sparring” offered another view of Okinawan manhood: fists clenched so tightly before a punch that the whole arm vibrated (Miyagi), or weight so implacably rooted in the earth that fighting from a seated, cross-legged position proved as natural as standing up (Takeda).

Some of the same karate punches and kicks turned up immediately afterward in the contemporary martial arts-based dance solo “Bu-No-Mai,” with combat techniques artfully dramatized, stylized and feminized on the way to the bravura finale: a double sword dance.

This programming juxtaposition also highlighted a kind of sub-theme of the program: the display of distinctive Okinawan hand movement, whether in the most lethal karate-blow or the most delicate dance-gesture. The quartet “Hamachidori” isolated the hands at their most sculptural, with women wearing dark blue (nearly black) robes with white domino-like patterns walking through geometric formations while curling their wrists or slowly swirling their fingers in space as if stirring some thick liquid.

Widely considered to be merely an outpost of Japanese culture, Okinawa and the other Ryukyu Islands boast their own unique heritage--some of it formed by more contact with other Asian societies throughout their history than Japan itself enjoyed. In its supremely genteel sampler program, the Okinawan Traditional Dance and Music Company reflected that heritage with impressive refinement.