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UNDER THE RADAR / NOH NOW: MUGEN NOH OTHELLO

(photo by Takuma Uchida)

Desdemona tells her dark tale in Satoshi Miyagi’s Mugen Noh Othello (photo by Takuma Uchida)

Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
January 11-14, $35
Under the Radar continues through January 15
212-715-1258
www.japansociety.org
www.publictheater.org

In September 2011, general artistic director Satoshi Miyagi and the Shizuoka Performing Arts Center sold out Japan Society with their international success, Medea, a unique reinterpretation of Euripedes’s classic tragedy. They now return with a retelling of Shakespeare’s Othello, being presented as part of the Public Theater’s Under the Radar festival and concluding Japan Society’s “NOH-NOW” series, which previously featured Luca Veggetti’s Left-Right-Left, Hiroshi Sugimoto’s Rikyu-Enoura, and Siti Company’s Hanjo. The Tokyo-born Miyagi, who has also directed versions of Hamlet and A Midsummer Night’s Dream for SPAC as well as Ibsen’s Peer Gynt and many Japanese dramas, including Mishima’s The Black Lizard, transforms the Bard’s tale of jealousy and pride into a mugen noh, a story told by a spirit, in this case Desdemona, the wife of Othello, a successful general deceived by his ensign, Iago, who seeks revenge on Othello for promoting Iago’s rival, the soldier Cassio. The ninety-minute show, performed in Japanese with English surtitles, is dark and ominous, with a script by Sukehiro Hirakawa, chanting, live music composed by Hiroko Tanakawa, beguiling costumes and masked figures designed by Kayo Takahashi, and lighting by Koji Osako. The company consists of Kazunori Abe, Yuya Daidomumon, Asuka Fuse, Maki Honda, Sachiko Kataoka, Yukio Kato, Kotoko Kiuchi, Micari, Keita Mishima, Fuyuko Moriyama, Yoneji Ouchi, Yu Sakurauchi, Junko Sekine, Haruyo Suzuki, Ayako Terauchi, and Soichiro Yoshiue. Also part of Japan Society’s 110th anniversary, Mugen Noh Othello is scheduled for only four performances, January 11-13 at 7:30 and January 14 at 4:00; opening night will be followed by a reception with the artists, while the January 12 show will be followed by a Q&A. In addition, SPAC will be teaching a Theater Technique workshop on January 13 at 1:30 ($45), focusing on body exercises required for its unique voice production.

HIROSHI SUGIMOTO: GATES OF PARADISE

(photo by Richard Goodbody)

Hiroshi Sugimoto followed the journeys of the Tenshō Embassy through Italy for photographic series (photo by Richard Goodbody)

Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
Through January 7, $12
212-715-1258
www.japansociety.org

In his 2005-6 Japan Society exhibition “History of History,” Tokyo-born multidisciplinary artist Hiroshi Sugimoto explored time and spirituality by including his photographic works alongside artifacts from his personal collection dating from the prehistoric era to the fifteenth century. Throughout his career, he has constructed his own professional history by photographing dioramas at natural history museums (“Still Life”), capturing electrical discharges on photographic dry plates (“Lightning Fields”), focusing on the horizon line across the ocean (“Seascapes”), shooting wax figures to look like paintings (“Portraits”), using long exposures to reveal the blinding soul of movie palaces (“Theaters”), and turning one thousand gilded wooden Buddha statues at Sanjῡsangen-dō (Hall of Thirty-Three Bays) in Kyoto into a dizzying film (Sea of Buddha). His latest Japan Society show, “Hiroshi Sugimoto: Gates of Paradise,” on view through January 7 as part of the institution’s 110th anniversary celebration, returns to historical investigation, from a larger cultural perspective rather than a personal one.

Hiroshi Sugimoto, Pantheon, Rome, gelatin silver print, 2015 (© Hiroshi Sugimoto.)

Hiroshi Sugimoto, “Pantheon, Rome,” gelatin silver print, 2015 (© Hiroshi Sugimoto)

In 2015, while Sugimoto, who is based in Japan and New York City, was traveling through Italy photographing theaters, he learned of the fascinating story of Mancio Ito, Miguel Chijiwa, Juliao Nakaura, and Martinao Hara, four young Japanese men who were sent to Europe in 1582 to experience Western Christian culture. Known as the Tenshō Embassy, they returned eight years later with much information that influenced Japanese and nanban hybrid art, taught by Jesuit missionaries, which combined Eastern and Western subjects and techniques. Sugimoto decided to follow their journey, taking photographs of landmark structures and artworks the young men most likely saw, including the Pantheon in Rome, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, the Siena Duomo, the Duomo in Florence, the Villa Farnese, the Pietà by Michelangelo, and the Teatro Olimpico in Vicenza. Those works are displayed along with related historical objects that add intriguing context. “Pope Gregory XIII welcomed the four boys because he saw them as renewing the spirit of the three wise men coming from the East to pay homage to the newborn Christ,” Sugimoto explains in his artist statement. “That sense of mutual surprise from over four centuries ago still flows, not quite wholly absorbed, in my bloodstream.”

Hiroshi Sugimoto, The Last Supper: Acts of God, gelatin silver print, 1999–2012

Hiroshi Sugimoto, “The Last Supper: Acts of God,” gelatin silver print, 1999–2012 (© Hiroshi Sugimoto)

Sugimoto, who will turn seventy this year, produced silver gelatin prints of the places, casting the images in an austere, ghostlike darkness. The hole at the top of the inside of the Pantheon glows with light. The winding staircase at Villa Farnese unfolds in a captivating vertical triptych. The long hallway of the Teatro Olimpico beckons. In its own room, “The Last Supper: Acts of God” features Sugimoto’s more-than-twenty-two-foot-long horizontal photograph of Leonardo da Vinci’s iconic painting; the photo was significantly damaged when Sugimoto’s Chelsea studio was flooded by Hurricane Sandy. However, the destruction lends new meaning to the work, with some sections sharp and distinct, others looking melted and severely scratched — and adding what appears to be a halo around the head of Jesus. “I chose to interpret this as the invisible hand of God coming down to bring my monumental, but unfinished, ‘Last Supper’ to completion,” Sugimoto writes. “Leonardo completed his ‘Last Supper’ over five hundred years ago and it has deteriorated beautifully. I can only be grateful to the storm for putting my work through the same half millennium of stresses in so short a time.” Sugimoto’s photograph is accompanied by a fourteenth-century Japanese bust of Christ’s head that has been badly damaged.

A Portuguese Ship

Unidentified artist, “A Portuguese Trading Ship Arrives in Japan,” pair of six-panel folding screens, ink, color, gold, and gold-leaf on paper, early 17th century (Feinberg Collection)

Sugimoto has curated a collection of letters, portraits, scrolls, screens, and other objects that reveals the cross-cultural exchange between Japan and Europe that emerged during the “Christian Century” of the 1500s as missionaries came to the East and converted many Japanese. “A Portuguese Trading Ship Arrives in Japan,” consisting of a pair of early-seventeenth-century six-panel nanban folding screens, uses both European and Japanese techniques to relate the story of the West meeting the East. The details in the individual sections are worth examining at length to explore the architecture, manner of dress, and facial expressions. A bamboo vase, hanging scroll letter, and tea scoop belonging to tea master Sen no Rikyū refers to chanoyu, “the way of tea,” a ritual that was the focus of Sugimoto’s Rikyu-Enoura, an original theatrical production that ran in early November as part of Japan Society’s “NOH NOW” series.

Hiroshi Sugimoto

Hiroshi Sugimoto’s “Gates of Paradise” includes a photo of Ghiberti’s rendering of David slaying Goliath (© Hiroshi Sugimoto)

In the final room, Sugimoto debuts his latest series, “Gates of Paradise,” large-scale photographs of the bronze doors created by Lorenzo Ghiberti for the Baptistery of St. John in Florence from 1425 to 1452. Dubbed the “Gates of Paradise” by Michelangelo, the work underwent a major decades-long renovation and was moved to the Opera del Duomo Museum in 2012, where Sugimoto saw them. There are ten pieces from the black-and-white series, gelatin silver prints that give the bronze doors a different, haunting look. Among the subjects are Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Noah, Abraham, Jacob and Esau, Solomon, David, and Joshua, in biblical scenes that sometimes require a bit of entertaining deciphering. (And don’t miss Sugimoto’s “Red and White Plum Blossoms Under Moonlight,” a stunning platinum and palladium print on two screens that he produced in commemoration of the three hundredth anniversary of the birth of Japanese artist Ogata Kōrin.) It is an engaging and stimulating conclusion to the exhibit, for which Sugimoto also redesigned Japan Society’s lobby pond and upstairs corner garden, adding a stainless-steel sculpture to each. On January 6 from 6:00 to 9:00, in conjunction with the closing of the show, Japan Society is hosting “Escape East @ 333,” the next edition of its monthly mixer for art enthusiasts, with a viewing of the exhibition, live music from DJ Aki, and sake tastings; admission is free with advance registration.

NOH-NOW: HANJO

SITI Company presents a new adaptation of Yukio Mishimas Hanjo at Japan Society

SITI Company presents a new adaptation of Yukio Mishima’s Hanjo at Japan Society

Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
December 7-9, $35, 7:30
212-715-1258
www.japansociety.org
siti.org

Japan Society’s four-part “NOH-NOW” series, which began with Luca Veggetti’s Left-Right-Left and Hiroshi Sugimoto’s Rikyu-Enoura, continues with SITI Company’s adaptation of Yukio Mishima’s Hanjo, running December 7-9. (SITI presented a staged reading of Hanjo at Japan Society in May 2007.) Freely adapted by Japanese author, poet, and filmmaker Mishima (The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea, Madame de Sade) from Seami Motokiyo’s fourteenth-century noh play about love and betrayal, the work features three characters, the mad girl Hanako, the spinster Jitsuko, and a young man, Yoshio, performed in rotation through three iterations by Akiko Aizawa (who just appeared in Ripe Time’s adaptation of Haruki Murakami’s Sleep at BAM), Gian-Murray Gianino, and Stephen Duff Webber. Leon Ingulsrud directs the bilingual production from his translation, with live music composed and played by violist Christian Frederickson, sets and lighting by Brian H Scott, costumes by Mariko Ohigashi, and choreography by Wendell Beavers. Founded by Anne Bogart and Tadashi Suzuki in 1992, the company has previously staged such inventive works as Chess Match No. 5, bobrauschenbergamerica, Steel Hammer, and Bob and, in its early years, were regulars at the Toga Festival in Japan. The December 7 show at Japan Society will be followed by a reception with members of the company, while the December 8 performance will be followed by a Q&A with the artists. “NOH-NOW” concludes January 11-14 with Satoshi Miyagi’s Mugen Noh Othello as part of the Public Theater’s Under the Radar Festival.

BAM NEXT WAVE FESTIVAL: HARUKI MURAKAMI’S SLEEP

Ripe Time reimagines Haruki Murakamis Sleep in inventive theatrical adaptation (photo ©Julieta Cervantes)

Ripe Time reimagines Haruki Murakami’s Sleep in inventive theatrical adaptation at BAM (photo ©Julieta Cervantes)

BAM Fisher, Fishman Space
321 Ashland Pl.
November 29 – December 2, $25
718-636-4100
www.bam.org
ripetime.org

In February 2016, Japan Society presented Ripe Time’s work-in-progress adaptation of Japanese author Haruki Murakami’s 1993 short story Sleep as part of the “Women on the Rise” series. The final version is now making its New York City premiere November 29 through December 2 at the BAM Fisher as part of BAM’s Next Wave Festival. The seventy-five-minute experimental, fantastical production is based on Murakami’s (The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Kafka on the Shore) tale of a Japanese housewife who is “both a body on the verge of sleep and a mind determined to stay awake”; the story begins, “This is my seventeenth straight day without sleep. I’m not talking about insomnia.” The multimedia, multidisciplinary show is adapted by Naomi Iizuka (36 Views, Tattoo Girl) and directed and devised by Rachel Dickstein (The World Is Round, Septimus and Clarissa) and Ripe Time, with set design by Susan Zeeman Rogers, projections by Hannah Wasileski, lighting by Jiyoun Chang, sound by Matt Stine, costumes by Ilona Somogyi, and music by NewBorn Trio. The cast features Akiko Aizawa, Brad Culver, Takemi Kitamura, Paula McGonagle, Jiehae Park, and Saori Tsukada. In a program note, Dickstein explains, “In an era where difference is under siege, we hope Sleep’s vision of an ordinary woman tearing down the prison walls of her life as a wife and mother offers a necessary rally cry for us all.”

HIROSHI SUGIMOTO: RIKYU-ENOURA

(photo © Odawara Art Foundation)

Hiroshi Sugimoto’s Rikyu-Enoura makes its world premiere this weekend at Japan Society (photo © Odawara Art Foundation)

Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
November 3-5, $95
212-715-1258
www.japansociety.org
www.odawara-af.com/en

In 2011 and 2014, Japan Society awarded grants to Japanese multidisciplinary artist Hiroshi Sugimoto for his ambitious Odawara Art Foundation, which is now open to the public and features indoor and outdoor stages for noh and bunraku productions, a large gallery, a tearoom, astronomical observation spaces, and more. Sugimoto, who is based in Tokyo and New York City, will now be presenting the first fruits of that collaboration with several special programs at Japan Society, beginning with the exhibition “Gates of Paradise” (through January 7), the noh play Rikyu-Enoura (November 3-5), and the lecture and book signing “Architecture of Time: Enoura Observatory, Where Consciousness & Memory Originate” (December 15). For more than forty years, photographer, sculptor, architect, and historian Sugimoto has explored history and science, the past and the future, time and memory while blurring the lines between fiction and reality. He has photographed dioramas at natural history museums (“Still Life”), captured electrical discharges on photographic dry plates (“Lightning Fields”), focused on the horizon line across the ocean (“Seascapes”), shot wax figures to look like paintings (“Portraits”), used long exposures to reveal the blinding soul of movie palaces (“Theaters”), and turned one thousand gilded wooden Buddha statues at Sanjῡsangen-dō (Hall of Thirty-Three Bays) in Kyoto into a dizzying film (Sea of Buddha). He also curated the expansive and wide-ranging “History of History” in 2005-6 at Japan Society and designed the set and costumes for Sanbaso, divine dance, an ancient celebratory ritual dance with noh performers in the Guggenheim Rotunda in 2013. So Sugimoto was a logical go-to choice when Japan Society was putting together its “NOH NOW” series as part of its 110th anniversary. Sugimoto will be staging the world premiere of Rikyu-Enoura, about sixteenth-century tea master Sen-no-Rikyu, featuring a libretto by traditional-style poet Akiko Baba; a tea ceremony by Sen So’oku (a direct descendant of Sen-no-Rikyu); noh actors Kanze Tetsunojo and Katayama Kurouemon; noh musician Kamei Hirotada; and more. Each show will be preceded by a lecture by Wesleyan University assistant professor Dr. Takeshi Watanabe one hour before curtain.

NOH-NOW: LEFT-RIGHT-LEFT

Luca Veggettis Left-Right-Left will make its North American premiere at Japan Society October 13-14 as part of NOH NOW series

Luca Veggetti’s Left-Right-Left will make its North American premiere at Japan Society October 13-14 as part of “NOH-NOW” series

Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
Friday, October 13, and Saturday, October 14, $35, 7:30
212-715-1258
www.japansociety.org

In May 2014, Italian director and choreographer Luca Veggetti brought Project IX — Pléïades to Japan Society, a graceful collaboration with Japanese percussionist Kuniko Kato and Japanese dancer Megumi Nakamura that was the finale of the sixtieth anniversary season of the institution’s performing arts program. Veggetti and Nakamura are now back for the North American premiere of Left-Right-Left, part of Japan Society’s 110th anniversary and the series “NOH-NOW,” which blends the traditional Japanese musical drama with contemporary styles. The work, commissioned by Japan Society and Yokohama Noh Theater, is conceived, directed, and choreographed by Veggetti, with the esteemed author and scholar Dr. Donald Keene of the Donald Keene Center of Japanese Culture serving as project advisor and text translator. The three-part piece is inspired by the ancient play Okina, a sacred ritual about peace, prosperity, and safety. It will be performed by butoh dancer Akira Kasai, contemporary dancer Nakamura, and butoh-trained dancer Yukio Suzuki, with music director Genjiro Okura on noh small hand drum and Rokurobyoe Fujita on noh fue. Child noh actor Rinzo Nagayama will recites the new English translation of passages from Okina and another popular traditional noh play, Hagoromo, about a celestial feather robe. The lighting is by Clifton Taylor, with costumes by Mitsushi Yanaihara. “Noh has very precise patterns in the space that the performers follow,” Veggetti says in a promotional interview, explaining that his goal was “to use this archaic blueprint form and infuse it with different choreographic ideas, with that to find a language that is somehow organic.” Left-Right-Left, or “sa-yu-sa” in Japanese, will be at Japan Society on October 13, followed by a Meet-the-Artists Reception, and October 14, followed by an artist Q&A. In addition, Okura, Grand Master of the Okura School of kotsuzumi, will lead a noh music workshop on October 14 at 10:30 am ($45). “NOH-NOW” continues November 3-5 with the world premiere of Hiroshi Sugimoto’s Rikyu-Enoura, December 7-9 with Leon Ingulsrud’s adaptation of Yukio Mishima’s Hanjo, and January 11-14 with Satoshi Miyagi’s Mugen Noh Othello.

JAPAN CUTS: ANTI-PORNO

Anti-Porno

Ami Tomite stars in Sion Sono’s bizarre, beguiling, anarchistic Anti-Porno

FESTIVAL OF NEW JAPANESE FILM: ANTI-PORNO (ANCHI PORUNO) (アンチポルノ) (Sion Sono, 2016)
Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
Sunday, July 16, 8:45
Festival runs July 13-23
212-715-1258
www.japansociety.org
www.nikkatsu-romanporno.com

“I’m a virgin. A virgin, but a whore,” successful novelist, painter, and fashion designer Kyoko (Ami Tomite) says at the beginning of Sion Sono’s bizarre, deliciously candy-colored and anarchic Anti-Porno, making its East Coast premiere July 22 at 10:30 in Japan Society’s Japan Cuts: Festival of New Japanese Cinema. You never know what to expect from Siono, whose previous films include the wild and wacky Love & Peace, the wild and crazy Why Don’t You Play in Hell? and the strangely beautiful and touching Himizu. Anti-Porno is part of Nikkatsu’s Roman Porno Reboot Project, a celebration of the forty-fifth anniversary of the studio’s Japanese softcore films, which began in 1971 with Shōgorō Nishimura’s Apartment Wife: Affair in the Afternoon and continued through 1988 with Daisuke Gotō’s Bed Partner. In true Sono style, he honors the format by confusing fiction with reality, star characters with minor newbies, and the past with the present in ways that are as exhilarating as they are confounding. The story takes place primarily in a spectacular apartment decked out in bright yellows, blues, and reds, with large-scale paintings and a lushly alluring open bathroom. Kyoko is a self-obsessed terror who abuses her dedicated assistant, Noriko (Mariko Tsutsui) — or is it the other way around? “I want to be a whore like you,” Noriko begs. There’s fetishism galore, plenty of nudity, a lizard trapped in a bottle, incest, an audience of girls in Sailor Moon outfits, sycophantic hangers-on, a mysterious sex film, and then a man yells, “Cut!” Soon you’re not sure who’s in charge, who’s the lead, and whether you’re watching a movie, a movie-within-a-movie, or a novel-within-a-movie-within-a-movie. “This isn’t my life!” Kyoko screams. Or is it? Sono, who also wrote the script, uses the porn format to question ideas of sexuality, misogyny, freedom, abuse, feminism, exploitation, dominance, art, power, and pornography itself, resulting in a rousing, er, climax. The gorgeous production design is by Takashi Matsuzuka, with striking cinematography by Maki Ito, raunchy costumes by Kazuhiro Sawataishi, and an inventive, wide-ranging score by Susumu Akizuki. Because of the film’s graphic nature, no one under eighteen will be admitted to the Japan Society screening, which will be preceded by Sawako Kabuki’s hysterical three-minute X-rated animated vomitfest Summer’s Puke Is Winter’s Delight.