After Shoriba (1979), a work inspired by the ancient kagura dances of the Shinto cult, and Jomon Sho (1982), an explicit reference to prehistory, Ushio Amagatsu, the choreographer and founder of the Japanese ensemble Sankai Juku, has guided his group toward an increasingly refined aesthetic. This evolution gradually moved away from the radical nature of Butoh—a Japanese avant-garde dance born in the 1960s with a specific ideological and social protest purpose—in favor of a spectacular construction of rare visual purity, permeated by significant symbolism.
Elements of Butoh remain in his works: bodies covered in white powder, completely shaved heads, gestures approaching silence, and statuesque poses. However, the artistic form Amagatsu has adopted in recent years is more meditative and less confrontational, nourished by poetic impulses.
Sankai Juku, which means "Workshop of the Mountain and the Sea" in Italian, has been active since 1975 and has since presented numerous works on international stages. Famous pieces include Unetsu, The Egg Stands Out of Curiosity (1986) dedicated to dancer Yoshiuki Takada, and the more recent Hiyomeki, in the Sweetness of Vibration (1995) and Hibiki, Resonance from Far Away Past (1998).
Every performance by the group is a voluptuous procession of movements that brings the mysteries of life to the stage, depicting the relentless passage of time manifesting in slow transformations. Ushio Amagatsu's choreographies are imbued with Eastern wisdom: the present is paired with the perpetuation of the life cycle, alongside the ancestral nature that constitutes us.
Kagemi, Beyond the Metaphors of the Mirror is a seven-part work for seven dancers that premiered in 2000 at the Théâtre de la Ville in Paris. Kage, meaning shadow, and Mi, meaning to see, combine to form the word "mirror" (Kagemi): a surface in which one looks and which looks back, that reflects and in which one is reflected. Amagatsu writes as a note to the work: “Rising from the horizontal plane of the water, the face takes the vertical. A vague and fleeting state evolving toward more defined contours. The right hand questions, the left responds.”
For an hour and twenty-five minutes—like all Sankai Juku performances that seem to flow from one another as if to construct a single, primary and definitive image of the world through their artistic journey—an universe is built, suspended between identity and metamorphosis, between sand and water, life and death.
Using a spectacular set composed of sand and lotus flowers suspended a few centimeters from the floor, which with extreme simplicity evokes the alchemy of dance, Amagatsu develops in Kagemi an initiatory journey between human intimacy and the universe, leading the spectator to the deepest mysteries of dance and existence.
