I left Japan Society wondering how a single person could so convincingly fill the stage as though it’s overflowing with corps dancers. In the midst of my musing my friend begins to speak about the contemporary artist Hiro Yamagata saying “Hiroaki Umeda would be the figurative version of Hiro.” “Yeah?” I ask, momentarily diverting my thoughts to how smart he is to make that immediate connection between fine art and dance. I sometimes miss those sparkling revelations that can take criticism to a more intelligent level.
What I can do is invite you to imagine a world cast with sound, light and images. A place densely filled, but inhabited by only one person. Subtle in its sensory overload, it is the minimal and drastic, delicate and provocative world Umeda creates in Adapting for Distortion. A solo artist who commandeers all elements of his works, his butoh/ hip-hop-inspired choreography appears within an environment of sparse, theatrical lighting, electronic beats and crackling technologic noise. His movements are sensual against the visceral dances of the projections and score. The juxtaposition of Umeda struggling to assert his organic self against the power of his electronically-generated images and noise facilitates the piece’s elusive nature.
Though it’s overflowing with digital soundscapes and flashing cyber-imagery, Umeda’s show is void of any conceptual theme. It is empty of anything that might constitute a meaning and brings us back to simply (that is not to say simple) visual and auditory stimulation. What Umeda does instead is present a series of sensations for us to become engulfed in; sometimes anxious, sometimes energizing, and often disorientating (a few audience members left after the first half). Known internationally as a photographer (he studied at Japan’s Nihon University), Umeda uses his choreography, moving images and terse sound effects to create stimulating designs. His choice to omit abstract ideas in Adapting for Distortion frees us from the associative wanderings that can often distract us from our initial intention, which is (unless you’re a critic) purely to watch.
Multi- talented Umeda balances his ambitious feats with an astute structure and shrewd framework making a genuinely warm connection between the entertainer and the entertained. It’s not a work for the headache prone, but in its self-effacing radicalism Umeda shares with us a universe of opposites and pairings. A work that is no more Dance than it is Contemporary Art. A work that (for me) is a revelation.
