The reviewers are: Stephenie Cahalan, Anica Boulanger-Mashberg, Kylie Eastley, Lucy Wilson-Magnus, Mark Cutler and Gai Anderson.

S20
Peacock Theatre
March 27-29 2009

Stephenie Cahalan
A WHITE screen and a diminutive man in black met the audience of a packed Peacock Theatre. Silent anticipation mounted with every second Hiroaki Umeda stood, back to the screen, waiting to begin the performance. Slowly, the movement begins, the sound descends and the audience is drawn into the incredible world of this Japanese dancer, choreographer and designer.

In ‘Duo’, the first of three pieces, there is a mirror image of Hiroaki’s figure projected beside him, heavily pixellated. The image breaks down, explodes or distorts, but always returns to pick up the reflection of Hiroaki. With a live feed from the camera filming him, then to the computer, the projection adds another dimension to the movement that alternates between fluid and robotic.

‘Montevideoaki ‘is a short video piece with a series of sharply edited images of Hiroaki, again mirrored, moving in mostly industrial contexts. It is a beautifully constructed mosaic of sound and images of the dancer, lovely for its simplicity, and utterly absorbing.

Umeda is a man of many talents, composing the sound, designing the light and visual accompaniment for the show, arranging and executing the technical production. He is a modern, digital-age one-man band, travelling solo with computer and projector. It is amazing what this one man can create and perform, so artful in its minimalism but dazzling for its complexity of construction, as every note and every line projected onto the screen behind the dancer is a valuable component of the overall result. Having said that, Umeda could also just stand on a rug and move, without all the gizmos, and it would still be a thrill to watch.

Finally, in ‘while going to a condition’ Umeda spends what seems like an age in silence before the sound begins. It is a hypnotic opening and the audience is drawn into his meditative state. We are given the elements of the performance piece by piece; a sound, a flash of white line across the screen, a punctuated move. Gradually more of each is thrown at the audience and, with music building to a crescendo, we are treated to a display of Umeda’s ability to make his body look like it is filled with a viscous liquid rather than blood and bone.

In conversation after the show, Hiroaki admitted the long silences and slow openings are meant to frustrate the audience and build tension. His wants us to experience the space, not just see it. For all his incredible ability to move his body, he manages to occupy just a portion of the stage which he explained is for two reasons: if he moved around the stage more he would draw attention to the theatre dimensions; and his home is small and that’s all the room he has to practice in!

Not for the faint-hearted, as the sound and lights are extreme, Umeda’s performance could be called dance, performance art, a multi-dimension installation with movement. Whatever label you give it, this collection of work is a quantum leap beyond the comfort zone, and well worth the trip.

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Anica Boulanger-Mashberg
‘S20’ is absorbing, captivating, and above all, surprisingly beautiful, given how harshly basic its component parts are. The stage is bare, the single performer wears black and uses only a miniscule portion of the stage, the video projection is often just white lines on a black screen, and the sound is essentially digital noise. But in Hiroaki Umeda’s hands, these elements are melded into a mesmerising show.

‘S20′ (also the name of Umeda’s company) consists of three short dance pieces: ‘Duo’, the video work ‘Montevideoaki’, and ‘while going to a condition’. These works, particularly the two live ones, are confronting and unsettling. The soundscape is loud, often oppressively so; the lighting is sometimes blindingly bright and sometimes punishingly dim; and there is no overt narrative to guide us through the performance. And what’s more, the assaults to the senses are relentless, only occasionally broken by long, challenging absences of stimulation. But this is honest, energetic work, and the extremes are never gratuitous.

Umeda, who calls himself an artist rather than a dancer, describes his choreography as a ‘score’, and the technical components as ‘objects’. He choreographs not just his own movement but the entire work, adding objects to the score always with the desire to create a ‘space’ for his audience to experience. In all three pieces in this show, the space is one which – in its simplicity, violence, repetitiveness, and multidimensionality – is compelling, compulsive, and rewarding.

Umeda claims to try to empty his art of narrative and meaning, but it is almost impossible for an audience to do the same. The mirroring of physical/digital dancer in ‘Duo’ brings to mind so many binaries: self/other, conscious/unconscious, real/imagined, organic/constructed. It also breaks down several intuitive binaries. For example, in this pair it is the physical body which is more enduring than the digital replica. Innumerable meanings and interpretations spiral away from these provocative symbolisms in the work. But these potential interpretations are not prescribed by the work, and Umeda succeeds in maintaining his focus on space and experience, with a rave-like intensity created through repetitive movement, sound, and image. Even when the elements are abrasive – the loud electronic noises, the sometimes distressing digital interference with the video image – this repetition is meditative and somehow comforting. The repetitive rhythms in the soundscape morph between the seemingly arbitrary, jarring, and chaotic; the irresistibly infectious doof-doof of a nightclub; and meditative flickers such as a rush of bird wings (or is it pages turning?).

It is difficult (and almost irrelevant) to separate Umeda’s multiple roles – whether as sound designer, dancer or digital artist, he creates with finesse and precision. The precision never precludes fluidity, however, and parts of ‘while going to a condition’ are improvised and spontaneous. His use of technology, such as the interactive digital manipulation of the projections, is always integral to the work, and never incorporated just for the sake of working with new media. This is refreshing, and when coupled with Umeda’s unique style of physical movement, it makes ‘S20’ a stimulating experience.

Anica Boulanger-Mashberg is a Hobart-based performer and writer.

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Kylie Eastley
A must-see in the Ten Days on the Island program, ‘S20’ achieved what all arts performances attempt; engagement, excitement and a memorable audience experience.

The one-man performance – written, directed, choreographed and staged by Hiroaki Umeda, and with his own original musical composition, attracted a packed audience at the intimate Peacock Theatre with good reason.

Whilst preferring to be referred to as a performer rather than a dancer, this innovative and enthralling artist drew on a range of dance, lighting and visual elements to present three separate works, all with their own character.

The performance begins with an empty stage and a lone, white projection on the back wall. Umeda positions himself on one side and the audience waits. No movement, just the sound of crashing waves … gentle and then building slowly; in tune with the anticipation and expectations of the audience. As the audience is drawn into this stillness, a mirror image appears on the screen next to the performer. Utilising a live video feed and pre-programmed computer software, Umeda creates a
computer-generated self that begins to follow his movements in its own static interpretation.

As the work progresses we are drawn further into a hypnotic series of sounds and noises as the performer transitions from tiny gestures to more hard-lined movements. Sound effects are machine-gunned into the audience. Initially the response is to think this is a random arrangement of noises. But this is a very cleverly constructed composition, as is the whole performance. He links a range of dance genres, from street/hip hop to other contemporary forms, to his own composed sounds that are a rich conglomeration of hard and fast urban noises – the result is white, stark, energetic, fantastic and compelling.

Born in Tokyo in 1977 into a world of technological possibilities, Umeda evocatively manipulates this digitised version of himself. This ephemeral image and the accompanying sounds are reminiscent of an un-tuned television; not quite reaching the right frequency. It’s like his digital replica is created and then completely deconstructed through technology.

There is an undulation of repetition and rhythm in the images flashing on screen and in the movements from this incredibly controlled, meditative performer. Umeda draws the audience into the tiniest of movements, enticing them in and building them to frustration, and then pummeling them with another onslaught of hard, sharp and fast sound and movement.

Umeda is aware of this. In conversation he discusses his desire to have an impact on audience expectations and emotions. ‘I think I want the audience frustrated. It is intentional’, he muses.

Without narrative, his aim is to evoke a physical and emotional experience from the audience. The repetition and rhythm of his work demands intense concentration and control, with Hiroaki appearing calm and almost trance-like at times. The series of lighting effects helps to build tension and enhance the audience experience, with shadowing and strobe lighting reinforcing the stark whiteness of each piece.

Umeda conveys light and shade, stillness and movement in his work – each as important as the other. The rhythm, bass and volume rumbles through the audience, and the lighting is harsh and almost unbearable at times. But it all works effectively and it is as he would desire, a transformative experience for the audience.

Kylie E. Eastley is a freelance arts consultant and producer based in Hobart.

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Gai Anderson
Hiroaki Umeda – solo performer, choreographer, sound/light/video artist – is also the unassuming Japanese man who walks onstage at the Peacock Theatre to perform two live movement-based pieces against a giant, white pulsating screen.

Neither the screen nor his body dominates; they are equal partners along with the sound, light and video. But it is his body and its subtle, meditative movements that draw us in as expectation builds and induced industrial noises gradually infiltrate the space.

Umeda does not call himself a dancer. He is a ‘mover’ with little formal dance training, a visual artist inspired as much by photography as by dance styles as diverse as butoh, ballet and hip hop. He says he steals from everywhere, but his movement comes from inside, as his body is inhabited by visual perceptions and physical feelings created by emotions in daily life. His process starts with drawings, then a musical/sound structure into which light, video and movement are placed. Some pieces are choreographed and others largely improvised within a structure.

The first piece we see, ‘Duo’, is choreographed. It includes live video fed through pre- programmed computers effects, which, projected back onto the screen next to Umeda, becomes his electronic stunt double, a mirror for his every movement. I wonder: ‘Who’s controlling who?’ Same, same but different, this image becomes staccato, expanded, pixellated, exploded, dissolved and finally disintegrated and reintegrated to start the process again. The dénouement is a soft, rhythmic, blurring flow of image, sound and body as we are left again with a silhouette in space.

In Umeda’s second work, ‘while going to a condition’, the screen comes alive like a creature entrapped as horizontal and vertical bands scream its language of light and the dancer’s body jars. Movements ever build with intensity as all the elements rise to crescendo and coalesce into one overwhelming sensory experience, epileptic in intensity and scale. I am somehow no longer in my seat but inside the performance, as much as it is inside me. Suddenly a naked, strobing light reveals anew the panting, sweating staring human, no longer a writhing silhouette but flesh and blood after all. And I find myself back in my seat; panting, sweating, staring.

After the show, in discussion with the artist, Umeda jokes how by necessity he must create his incredibly visceral works in very small spaces and that this has affected the nature of his movements on stage, which are intensely very much in one plane. However, as he mostly performs in front of a huge white screen, this ‘fixed point’ also becomes a focus that prevents the audience from seeing the space as small. Umeda admits to extending each work’s first minutes of movement minutiae to create an added anticipation, to draw us in – so that we might experience the piece, might feel with the eyes, the heart, the ears, the body; to stimulate a reaction and to find ourselves changed.

Gai Anderson is a performer and playwright based in Hobart.

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Lucy Wilson-Magnus

Hiroaki Umeda is so centred in his body he can work it into a speed and frenetic-ism resembling a free fall skydive through space. And then transform to such a fluidity he almost swims through sound and light.

All this is achieved while moving on his feet in less than a half-metre square. I learn later that’s all the room he has to rehearse in at home in Tokyo. Imagine for a moment: a funnel of movement in a small flat somewhere in the ‘disorienting chaos’ of the big fast city, to which his works respond.

Minimalism. It’s an aesthetic trait of the Japanese. Umeda breathes it in the way he creates and tours. Essentially he’s a one-man operation, driving all the elements: choreography, sound, image, light and performance – except for a short film where he didn’t rig the camera. He tours with the size of carry-on luggage (computer and camera) and is his own technician. Perhaps in response to this his performances create a double of himself.

Perhaps also, I pondered after the show, Umeda who began dancing at age twenty, just ten years ago, is still exploring in the realm of ideas. In future these ideas can reach a deeper conceptual rigour.

‘S20’ encompasses three works, with a tonal palette of black and white, shapes and sounds. Interestingly the festival showed his first works. ‘while going to a condition’ was simple with a black silhouette against a screen, which blurred to sharp, repetitive shift – the most powerful work for me.

In ‘Duo’, the lighting creates a shadow behind Umeda that gives him an extra set of arms, and an elongated head that suggests he’s wearing a bowler hat. The double image does not emulate this but is manipulated with repetition, distortion, delay, resemblance to TV fuzzy screen, heart-like throbs, machines, shimmers and electric pings. A child could interpret the vision in an exercise of spot the difference. Alternatively the viewer could be hypnotised.

In the short film ‘Montevideoaki’ again there is a double image juxtaposed against a big fast city, where Umeda’s frenzied fluidity is the pulse. It’s when he stands still and his trousers move with the wind, rather than his legs, that we see, other than his body, nature in the mix.

Lucy Wilson Magnus is an Animateur and Creative Producer.

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Mark Cutler
Leave any preconceptions of dance at the door. Better you bring … nothing … as you enter a world where disciplines collide. And please don’t expect ‘So You Think You Can Dance’ in 3D. What you will see/experience is a contemporary blend of dance as pure expressionism combined almost poetically with computer imagery, full-strength sound and minimalist lighting … at least for the most part minimal. Welcome to ‘S20’, Japanese dance artist Hiroaki Umeda’s audacious offering for 10 Days on the Island.

31-year-old Umeda has an understandably good reputation in Europe, particularly France … well, they did coin the term avant garde! His is the kind of contemporary offering you would expect to thrive among the über-hip. My tongue is nowhere near my cheek as I write that by the way. He is challenging for sure, but he is also confident in his craft, committed to his vision and compelling in the blend of both.

The performance was essentially split into two main pieces with a short video presentation as a divider. His first offering was conceived in 2004. Entitled ‘Duo’, it begins with Umeda juxtaposed against a blank screen on one side of the stage, while on the other side we view a computer generated mirror image. The dancer allows tension to build as we wait … and wait … for the dance to begin (see what I mean about leaving your preconceptions at the door). As he increases his movements we are forced to make a choice between watching the avatar and the man. It’s a terrific conflict and a wonderfully insightful comment on modern-day preoccupation with two-dimensional image. His dancing builds to include elements of krumping and other stylised movements. Here at last we see his pure dancing skill and mastery. As the piece concludes and Umeda leaves the space, the avatar takes a bow. It is both hilarious and arresting. Bravo!

His short filmed entitled ‘Montevideoaki’ was certainly less arresting, more a showcase for the camera operator and editor than the dancer. Nevertheless it works fine as a device to break up the live performance.

Umeda’s curiously named final piece, ‘while going to a condition’, contains his most expressive elements. The use of austere lighting and back screen projection produces a powerfully disconcerting mood, further enhanced by his now ubiquitous industrial sound – industrial in both nature and volume. Again the dancer plays with our expectations of what dance is by slowly unveiling the work. Not for him the idea of instant gratification. But when he builds, he really builds. The bleak lighting gives way to the most powerful strobe lighting this side of a ‘70s disco. Then we become aware that Umeda is performing virtually on the spot, drawing us into his performance while simultaneously drawing our attention to the space surrounding him. It is both clever and daring.

Technically Umeda is on top of himself. He even described the piece as improvised and one that comes entirely from within himself. Again this is dangerous stuff in the hands of someone more self-conscious or a performer concerned with outcomes. There is no narrative to look for; he simply wants us, as the audience, to be aware of how his body is and to leave us with that memory. It is a memory that will not be easily forgotten.

Mark Cutler is a Hobart based writer/performer.

This review is part of arts@work’s Critical Acclaim program, designed to increase critical analysis of the arts