Reviews and comment from the Demon Crew - creative writers at De Montfort University, Leicester.

Friday, 2 March 2018

Stories without words

DISCLAIMER: I am not and have never been a dancer myself (excluding the odd reluctant school performance), and so I am in no position to comment on the technical aspects of Kizuna Dance's Cultural Exchanges performance. But anyone in that audience will have recognised the amount of time, effort, and love that went into their choreography.

Through three dances, Kizuna brought fluidity and creativity to a range of subjects, from Buddhist sins to the struggles of 21st century life. Using only their bodies and expressions they told story upon story with no words.

Most interesting to me were the choices in music and sound. House music flowed into Japanese folk songs, then transformed into sections of monologues and stand-up comedy routines. Though these choices were worlds apart, they seemed to culminate in a whole new world of Kizuna's own creation; a world that, in that hour and a half, made complete sense.

The complexity of the choreography was overwhelming, with many instances in which each dancer was delivering a different performance to those around them. However it became clear that every single step was calculated, with the smallest of touches, balances and moments of eye contact keeping the dancers together as one moving organism.

But above all this, seeing the dancers' sweat and bandages, hearing their breathlessness, and watching the unwavering concentration on their faces was perhaps more moving to me than the dances themselves.

Check out Kizuna's website here

Araminta Jürgen-Romrig

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