Radical bodiless voices

Review of Neji&co Cue.

The third day of Toyooka Theatre Festival was the busiest for me so far as it was a three-show day. The Fringe programme has proven to be more interesting and innovative than the main director’s programme. In that respect, this is a very refreshing experience in comparison with Avignon or Edinburgh festivals where the sheer breadth of fringe programme makes it an impossible task to separate the good from the bad. To illustrate, this year’s Edinburgh Fringe brochure runs to 371 pages. Sometimes less is more.

The first performance of the day was Cue by the recently formed company neji&co led by dancer/choreographer Pijin Neji. Neji is a former Butoh dancer having performed with Dairakudakan, a famous Japanese butoh company. Following his work with this company, he decided to go independent and even worked abroad with choreographers such as Josef Nadj. However, it seems that this new company is a departure from his previous work and of course, &co in the company means that he intends to bring in some new people to work with. In case of Cue, this is another dancer and sound designer/musician/performer. At the Festival, Cue was performed at a small studio theatre of a local arts college and is presented as part of Fringe showcase (Fringe selection is another programme strand). The premise of the showcase as explained in the press release here (Japanese only) is that younger riskier performers would be able to present the work without too much burden, but with some restrictions in terms of venue and format.

Neji&Co: Cue, ©Kai Maetani

As I enter the performance space, I can immediately tell that the performance will be somewhat connected to the voice. Three microphones are scattered on stage against a white screen in the background, two at the front and one at the back. One of these is hanging low placed next to a human-like stone sculpture. Stage right an audio mixing table is in plain sight facing the stage horizontally. The performance begins with company leader and choreographer Pijin Neji explaining the work and company ethos. I am finding this framing of the performance through explaining the performance live or in much detail via the programme unique to Japanese theatre-going experience. Almost everyone does it and programmes are free of charge unlike in the UK. It  might feel as dumbing down in the UK or European context. However, it puts the audience on an equal footing. Honour Bayes wrote about this in The Stage (under paywall) stating that the “The context is a delicate thing to balance… but it doesn’t have to be about dumbing down work that is challenging, or providing the answers to work that asks questions. It can be used to give a hand to the audience and asking them to begin a journey they may not feel comfortable embarking on without support.”

Neji continues explaining that the constant expansion and contraction of the infections could be translated into input/output that occurs in a performance space between audience and performers, but also on stage itself between performers themselves and other stage elements. He also mentions that the English word ‘cue’ means a trigger “that are like raising voices of protests” and how this performance seeks to influence change.” In the programme notes, the company also writes about the word feedback in English and how the Japanese language borrows the word howling for the same thing. However, in Japanese this word could also imply ‘I’m here or it’s safe here’ to create a sense of belonging to a group.

What kind of cues then occur both on and off stage? At the beginning, Neji performs in minimalist movements disconnected from the minimalist sound produced directly from inside him. He moves to sit behind the microphone and closer to the mixing desk. It is here where a shizo-analytical exploration of body and voice becomes visible the most. As he moves his body and mouth ever closer to the microphone in a repetitive manner, he literally envelops it with his mouth. Through this eating of the microphone (inspired by popular video from 2020?) for a prolonged period, he also produces a sound from within his body which is then remixed live by the musician-performer (mizutama). Quite a novel strategy. The imagery is surreal as Neji morphs into an almost non-human while the sound designer/musician/performer meticulously manipulates the equipment. (Neji talks about maggots, p.5, Japanese only).  It is especially poignant with the two microphones left hanging in the space. Simply put, this is a destruction of performance/dance discourse as it negates the meaning, but also there is a successful attempt of negating the space and the performer(s) because these two microphones are never used. Similar sequence will occur later in the performance.

Neji&Co: Cue, ©Kai Maetani

In the second part, another dancer (Ryōta Hatanaka) joins Neji on stage and they both continue creating a cacophony of movements and sounds. At one point the musician-performer intervenes and stops the whole performance by going to one of the “voiceless” microphones as if to turn it on, but shrugs and comes back. Sometimes the performers let us cling, as audience members, onto little words that have some meaning as giving us a helping hand. For the most part though, it gets louder and louder changing into noise and heavy scream. The pain is progressively both visible and audible, pushing to the limits of both the human voice, and technology as it gets remixed and thrown back at us. These reverberations disperse into a heavy metal-like frenzy only stopping when the musician announces that the performance is finished.

Watching the performance, I was reminded of the works by Japanese company Gekidan Kaitaisha, especially Tokyo Ghetto. Peter Eckersall (2000) observes in Gekidan Kaitaisha’s work ‘dislocation or slippage from (1) fixed notion of the body, (2) fixed concepts of performance and by implication (3) fixed ideas and assumptions about the nature of Japanese culture. In Neji&co’s Cue this trifold disruption is most certainly visible, but they go beyond that. It is indeed a disruptive nod to butoh and its radicalised body because the performance merges butoh techniques with contemporary dance. The explanation at the beginning plays with ideas about the nature of existence of a (Japanese) artist with or without the pandemic. However, Neji&co’s innovation is that they are adding here a fourth radical disruptive element by playing with the fixity of (human) voice. It is this voice that has now become dislocated from the body itself. This bodiless voice then perhaps makes an appeal to or against the ever-more schizophrenic crisis after crisis we are faced with.

Neji&Co: Cue, ©Kai Maetani

Date attended: 17 September 2022
Venue: Professional College of Arts and Tourism (Small Theatre)
(as part of Toyooka Theatre Festival 2022)

Credits

Performers: Pijin Neji, Ryōta Hatanaka, mizutama
Sound designer: mizutama
Sound technician: Eitai Mochiki
Costume: Mika Masuda
Cooperation: THEATER E9 KYOTO, HAPS, FIGYA
Supported by The Saison Foundation