It's not often that a dance production lives up to an ambitious title, but "Luminous," by Saburo Teshigawara and the dance company Karas, certainly does.
I watched the premiere of this quite brilliant performance last week at Bunkamura Theatre Cocoon in Shibuya as if my eyes were onovertime. I left visually stunned, emotionally becalmed and intellectually edgy, bemoaning yet again the fact that the audience is ever required to leave their seat, let alone the theater.
Teshigawara has made some of the world's best dance over the last decade. With each landmark piece, such as "Noiject," "Absolute Zero" and "I Was Real -- Documents," he has moved from flawless technical precision in presentation to exacting mastery of the consciousness of movement, and the atmospherics that the expression of this consciousness can create between performer and spectator. Teshigawara knows that what we see on stage is only what we are shown, and as a result has become as great a crafter of lighting as a choreographer. He has also brought this understanding to street level, not in Tokyo (yet), but in London, with his educational STEP 2000 project workshops with homeless people and those with physical challenges. Last year, "Flower Eyes" was a direct result of this, a delicate piece for visually impaired performers.