Friday 05 March 2010
Japanese Drum Troupe Were Primal, Profound & Playful In Equal Measure @ Brighton Dome
…As the show reaches its climax the heaving sweating men, clutching great drum sticks the width of small trees, are beating and beating and beating and beating away at the great huge drum that dwarfs them (it would fill your living room) as they lean back in some kind of wild yoga stance and raise their arms time after time and the air fills with the noise, the great booming resonance – Yet it is not just the sound but the movement and the architecture of it all, both sound and presence has a sculptural quality so hard to pin down, and so finally they stop, the crowd roars and are on their feet, it is all over.
Many years ago a group of people disillusioned with the state of Japanese culture moved out to a remote island in the Sea of Japan. The Island was called Sado, a one-time commercial crossroads and haunting ground of lost exiles sent from the mainland in disgrace.
There, hidden away from the mainstream, they set out to re-discover their cultural roots through the traditional Japanese drum, the Taiko.
Aiming to create both a primal fierceness in their work and also a playful curiosity as well, they called themselves Kodo, which means both 'heartbeat' and 'children of the drum' (Brighton Dome, 04/03).
It is a fitting name, as our heartbeat is (of course) our primary rhythm, the one we move to each day. And there is something so organic about this work. It is very much 'of the earth' as if the drums had been pulled from the soil and then fashioned into instruments by ancient Japanese gods.
Yet it also has the sense of a highly developed art form with the architecture of the stage being so important to them, the placing of each drum and each person has been done with meticulous attention to detail.
Yet it is also a work of sculpture, sound sculpture, where the sense of structure in each song, always moving, always flowing like some kind of highly disciplined liquid, is always visible underneath like the bones and muscle of a very fit athlete.
But it is not all pounding great drums, the troupe are able to use percussion instruments of all sizes and types and even their beautiful voices.
Works performed here such as the finely relentless Chonlimia, the sense defying Monochrome and the great barrel drum smash of the Yatai-Bayashi are all fine examples of the breadth and depth of this incredible group of people.
If you missed them then you missed out, let"s just hope they come back again before too long.
What with Mr Einaudi earlier in the week, that makes two standing ovations in just a few days (and we haven"t even got to the Festival yet), someone at the Dome is doing something very right.
by: Howard Young (Arts Editor)
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Kodo: One Earth Tour Came To Brighton
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