april 28, 2008...11:44 pm
Geisha ( Knokke to Ostend )
Geisha
video (DVD PAL), 58min, 2005
‘ Geisha ‘ consists of two videos which should be played simultaneously.
In both videos we see a dance - filmed at the same time from two different angles - performed by a butohdancer. Her make-up and clothes refer to those of a geisha. It’s a dance on a tram near the coastline on a rainy morning during summertime.
The dancer responds on her fellow travellers, transforms and ascends in the surrounding.
In one video the colours are soft and we only see the dancer in profile. The atmosphere is surreal and reminds of a fairytale.
In the second video the colours are harsh and reality bites. Here we see a stranger among strangers.
Geisha is the Japanese word for artist. In that sense the videos are a metaphor for the artist and his place in society.
The videos are also a reflection on the authenticity of cultures. The butohdancer in this video comes from the west and lacks the specific kind of concentration for which the Japanese butohdancers are famous. Nevertheless she uses butohdance as a means to search for her identity in an alien civilisation. In that sense the videos also question todays search for truth and identity, symbolised in an oriental dance which in it’s own way was a search for a Japanese identity after the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.
It’s also a reference to Ruth StDenis, a pioneer in modern dance, who introduced dances from foreign ( and often colonial ) civilisations to western society in the beginning of the twentieth century.
But most of all ‘ Geisha ‘ is the record of a slow and beautiful live performance, viewed from two differnt angles, which offer many more perspectives.
Reageer