This year's Tokyo International Festival of Performing Arts, ongoing through Oct. 31, is a scaled-down version of previous festivals, with only six official participants and few of international interest. While this shifts the onus to domestic dance companies such as Min Tanaka and Kenshi Nomi, expectations of trail-blazing productions on the home front have so far been disappointing, with the partial exception of Kim Itoh's "On the Map" at Park Tower Hall in Shinjuku, Sept. 30-Oct. 2.
The mixed blessing was due to Itoh's mix of the fine dancers in his company the Glorious Future, with almost 20 workshop participants. Many of these new dancers did well, especially in their underwear in the early pieces, but the challenge of creating dance for so many strained Itoh's refined choreographic integrity.
Everything started out well in the first half of "On the Map" as spectators entered a hall stripped bare of its usual appointments and transformed into a set of cages and semi-obscured boxes hiding dancers, through which the audience strolled at leisure during the opening scene. This mis-en-scene of six cages, grilles, mirrored labyrinths and glass frames, divided by six dancers on six plinths down the middle of the hall, bore the Itoh hallmark of audience involvement -- this time clearly as voyeurs.