Dutch artists Monique van Kerkhof and Rob Oudendijk have performed in many unusual places -- a synagogue and a company office in New York, and in a huge dried-up reservoir and an art gallery in Japan. But until Nov. 18, they and fellow dancers they brought together had never before entertained an audience in a fantastic concrete palace 25 meters underground.
The couple, who studied modern dance at New York's Merce Cunningham Studio, and whose day jobs find them at the cutting edge of video and computer graphics, have been staging performances and putting on video art shows for the last 15 years in Japan. Always, though -- just as with their last major event, "Seeing the World Through Different Eyes" at Tokyo's United Nations University in 2003 -- they are keen on encouraging people to see things from a different perspective.
Titled "Tunnel Vision," their recent multimedia show with dance, music, video projection and even a noh performance, made effective use of the spectacular setting of the Gaikakuhousuiro, a massive underground flood-control basin north of Tokyo in Kasukabe City, Saitama Prefecture.