Of the many categories of dance in Japan, from traditional ballet to so-called neo-butoh and beyond into the unmapped territories of performance installation, Minoru Suzuki is the only ballet choreographer with the potential to be a contender internationally. To celebrate 35 years in the business, Star Dancers Ballet Company commissioned a work from Suzuki that stands head and shoulders above his previous works, such as the character-driven "DragonQuest" or the more abstract, unfortunately named "Yonk."
His new, evening-length piece "Missing Link" boasts another awkward title and is themed vaguely along the lines of "the expression of the subconscious," but its premiere at Setagaya Public Theater Jan. 26 showed Suzuki in full stride. Unhappily, the dumping of snow on Tokyo at the weekend must have seriously compromised attendance at the remaining performances. "Link" deserves to be widely toured.
Suzuki has a keen sense of how much new dance is influenced by, and celebrates, the voyeurism of hundreds of people sitting quietly in a darkened venue watching other people move their attractive bodies in artistic and provocative ways. To this end, and following hot in the footsteps of choreographers such as William Forsythe and Jiri Kylian, he opened the piece in silence behind a curtain of vertical black and white stripes, more sheer than funeral bunting and twice as transparent with angled lighting.