www.taikoz.com
Artistic Director’s note: “As a Kodo Distinguished Member, Chieko Kojima travels the world collaborating with a wide range of artists, and we are absolutely thrilled to have her perform as our guest artist in The Beauty Of 8. We have built the program around Chieko’s talents as a beautiful, emotive dancer and powerful, graceful taiko drummer. Audiences have been thoroughly entranced by Chieko, the members of Taikoz, the music and theatre which is The Beauty Of 8”.
The Beauty of 8 Our title, The Beauty Of 8, refers to the mesmerising shapes and movements that are synonymous with Chieko Kojima’s Onna-uchi (women’s side-on) style of taiko playing. As a performer, Chieko is the very embodiment of flow, round-ness, grace and power, and it was words and images such as these that were the catalyst from which the program grew. But, as Chieko and I talked more, a mutual love of words invited the idea of poetry more directly informing the shape and development of the program. In fact, the chosen poems pervade the entire program by giving it a sense of line and inevitability, and defining its tripartite structure: - Eternal Silence - Our Horizon - The White Bird Part 1 Eternal Silence begins with a recitation of three stanzas of Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s Ulysses, an epic poem that speaks of the desire to explore new frontiers, to live life to the full and to meet new challenges, even at an advanced age. A reference to broadening personal horizons and literally travelling towards new horizons informs The Beauty Of 8: indeed, six massive odaiko (grand drums) evoke our horizon, settng the stage in anticipation of our musical journey beginning. Four works comprise Part 1, each with a reference to traveling forth, mighty challenge and ultimate transformation through life’s experiences: Ulysses – Horizon – Morf – Cascading Waterfall.
Part 2 Our Horizon draws inspiration from a short Emily Dickinson poem. While worlds apart from Tennyson’s poem, something links them (in my mind, at least): with such brevity, Dickinson evokes a sense of journeying forth, of expansiveness, but without Tennyson’s heroics. An underlying feeling of uncertainty, melancholy and even dread pervades her world, although the image of birds elicits delight. Three works also evoking themes of challenge and transformation comprise Part 2, but this time supreme struggle comes to the fore: These Tested Our Horizon – Become – Pearl. Part 3 The White Bird takes off (pun intended) where Pearl leaves us: an image of birds taking flight underscored by a sung recitation of a tanka that is a source of inspiration for Chieko: Is not a white bird forlorn? It melts neither into the sky blue nor into the sea blue. It flies and floats! The image of the ‘white bird’ perfectly captures Chieko’s performance style – that is, somewhat dichotomous with a hint of melancholia on the one hand, and a feeling of freedom on the other. This final section of the performance sees Chieko’s choreography come to the fore as she dances to the ethereal strains of Riley’s sublime Drifing. This rather delicate and highly melodious music directly contrasts with the transformation of Chieko from dancer to drummer in her performance of Hana Hachijo, the epitome of The Beauty Of 8. Ian Cleworth, Taikoz Artistic Director
Poem
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
I am a part of all that I have met; Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades For ever and for ever when I move. How dull it is to pause, to make an end, To rust unburnished, not to shine in use! As though to breathe were life. Life piled on life Were all too little, and of one to me Little remains: but every hour is saved From that eternal silence, something more, A bringer of new things. The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks: The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends, ‘Tis not too late to seek a newer world. Push off, and sittng well in order smite The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths Of all the western stars, until I die. Though much is taken, much abides; and though We are not now that strength which in old days Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are; One equal temper of heroic hearts, Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
Poem
Emily Dickinson These tested Our Horizon — Then disappeared As Birds before achieving A Latitude. Our Retrospection of Them A fixed Delight, But our Anticipation A Dice — a Doubt —
Poem Bokusui Wakayama Shiratori ha Kanashikarazu ya Umi no Ao, Sora no ao nimo Somazu Tadayou. Is not a white bird forlorn? It melts neither into the sky blue nor into the sea blue. It flies and floats.
Guest Artists CHIEKO KOJIMA - Special guest artist
RILEY LEE - Shakuhachi Soloist
Chieko Kojima first encountered Japanese folk dancing when she joined Sado no Kuni Ondekoza in 1976. In 1981 she went on to become one of the founding members of Kodo.
Riley co-founded Taikoz in 1997. He began playing the shakuhachi in 1971 as a student of Chikuho Sakai until 1980, and with Katsuya Yokoyama since 1984.
She also seeks new expressions in the female song-anddance trio Hanayui and has an active solo career that is perhaps best characterized in her ongoing project, Yukiai.
In 1980, he became the first non-Japanese to attain the rank of dai shihan or Grand Master, and from 1973 was the first non-Japanese to play taiko professionally by touring internationally as a full-time performer with Ondekoza.
She is noted for her original style of dance in Kodo’s taikobased performances. She became a Kodo Distinguished Member in 2012 and has since visited many countries as a Japan Cultural Envoy from the Agency for Cultural Affairs.
Riley completed his BA and MA degrees in music at the University of Hawai’i, and received his PhD degree in ethnomusicology from the University of Sydney. In 2003, 2009, 2011 and 2016, he was made Visiting Fellow at Princeton University.
TAIKOZ Since 1997 Taikoz has developed an international reputation for vibrant performances that couple explosive energy and extreme dynamism with refinement and grace. The ensemble undertakes a year-round schedule of workshops, teaching and performances that have seen them appear on the stages of Australia’s finest concert halls, as well as those of Japan, the USA, Paris, New Zealand, Bangkok Taiwan, Abu Dhabi and most recently India, where Taikoz presented “Chi Udaka, their collaboration with Lingalayam Dance Company, to critical acclaim.” The group regularly appears in the theatres of regional Australia, having undertaken five Australia-wide tours. Taikoz has collaborated with John Bell and the Bell Shakespeare Company, taiko greats Eitetsu Hayashi, Kenny Endo and Kaoru Watanabe, as well as distinguished choreographers Meryl Tankard and Anandavalli. In 2012, Taikoz collaborated with Kodo on a nation-wide tour of Australia. The group has also appeared in concerto works with the Sydney, Melbourne, West Australian and Queensland Symphony Orchestras, as well as the Dresden Sinfoniker in Europe. Taikoz received the Sidney Myer Performing Arts Award in recognition of Taikoz’s commitment to Australian music.
IAN CLEWORTH - Artistic Director RILEY LEE - Shakuhachi Soloist KERRYN JOYCE ANTON LOCK TOM ROYCE-HAMPTON SOPHIA ANG RYUJI HAMADA KAREN NORRIS - Lighting Design BART GROEN - Stage Design JOHN CLEWORTH - Sound design
Kevin Jackson’s Theatre Diary Theatre, Dance and Concert blog, Sydney, Australia
THE BEAUTY OF 8, York Theatre, Seymour Centre, Chippendale, Sydney. 23 -24 October, 2015. It has been a while since I have attended a performance given by TAIKOZ, a group of Australian artists dedicated to the Japanese tradition of drumming, practising ‘Kumi-daiko’: a performance characterised by an ensemble playing on different drums and other percussive instruments. TAIKOZ was founded in 1997 by Ian Cleworth and Riley Lee. THE BEAUTY OF 8 is a new work of three parts: Eternal Silence; Our Horizon and The White Bird, featuring a guest artist, Chieko Kojima, a member of the Kodo ensemble (which is where Riley Lee, first encountered her, whilst, too, a member of that ensemble) and her own female song-and-dance trio, Hanayui. The title,THE BEAUTY OF 8, refers to the mesmerising shapes and movements that are synonymous with Chieko Kojima’s Onna-uchi [women’s side-on] style of taiko playing. This drumming combined with her background in folk dance embroiders a seduction which is a visual embodiment of flow, round-ness, grace and power. In this performance the ‘dance’ is made with the double sided drum being struck with a partner, Ian Cleworth, in the style known as Hachijo-daiko, although Ms Kojima features as a dancer throughout the whole program. The thrust stage of the York Theatre in the Seymour Centre, with the auditorium’s steeply raked seating, is an ideal space for this company to be seen and enjoyed. The lay-out of the instruments, the 6 impressively large drums on stands curved across the back of the stage, with other instruments, including isolated cymbals under special lighting, with a diaphanous floating framed backgound curtain and canopy, lit in cooling colours, create an atmosphere of anticipation of elegant ritual and excitement. The concert of live instruments are backed with sophisticated electronica (John Cleworth - mixed live) that prepare us for the intricately stylised entrance of the performers who co-operate with the rigour and delicacy of artists steeped in the traditions and disciplines of their music making and its ‘other’ culture origins with great respect and humility. We become witness to an ensemble of focused energy and commitment, in their bodies, that is translated to the audience with an uncluttered clarity of purpose, to guide us to attend to what is about to be given, with a kind of ‘religiosity’ of transcending ecstasy.
The visual artistry of the performers is a dramatic weaving of our senses to enhance our capacity to hear the sounds of the score with an alertness of all of our own body, that necessitates a significant contribution from us as listeners - the magic ‘circle’ of attended ‘give and take’ between the artists and, we, the audience, is palpable and fearlessly strong - rewarding. One becomes joyful with/at/for the joy of the artists, who find a release of their aspirations, honed by dedicated (and private) hard-work, in the playing and the reception from an audience in a trembling joint cathartic surrender. When Riley Lee enters for his ‘turns’ with his bamboo ‘flutes’ to play shakuhachi, one is aware that we are in the presence of a ‘master’, similarly, one is moved to believe the mastery charisma exuded with the presence and playing, by the leader of this extraordinary company, Ian Cleworth, particularly with his mesmerising and startlingly wondrous solo on drum, on the stage edge. The honour to hear and see such dedicated and miraculous playing is an astonishment. That this astonishment is created by the sheer pleasure and admired skill of all the artists: Kerryn Joyce, Kevin Man, Anton Lock, Tom Royce-Hampton, Sophia Ang (and Ryuji Hamada), is a gift beyond the ordinary experience one can so often have in the theatre. TAIKO is surely a jewel in the treasury of creative art in Australia, an equivalent in my experiencing of the Australian Chamber Orchestra (ACO). Both companies have ‘craftsmen’ of apparent great natural musical intuition, passion and undoubted and rare practised skill that lift them into the stratosphere of superhuman artistry. One wishes, longs, for an Australian acting company that demonstrated such dedication, humility and consistent and heightened skill. True, for me, THE BEAUTY OF 8, diminished its impression, in its third and newer work, The White Bird, but watching this newer work, built with and for the guest artist Chieko Kojima, was to see the beginnings of the possibility of a future dynamic of art through practised craft, to come. When they next play make sure you go. It was, at my witnessing, to see and hear, a Musical Genius built from love of the form and the literal physical sweat and cost of dedicated practice. An entirely rare combination to witness in Sydney theatre going from an Australian company, in my recent history.
Performing Arts Hub David Barmby
High-energy performance, lavish costumes, huge drums and physical display. Rating: 4 stars out 5 The inaugural Asia TOPA triennial festival in Melbourne and across regional Victoria celebrates Australia’s connection with contemporary Asian Art. The project is programmed over 30 venues and engages 40 organisations; 25 commissions have been invited and over 350 artists are involved from throughout Asia and Australia. Many performances in Asia TOPA, such as this one, represent collaborations between Australian and Asian artists. A founding member of the Japanese ensemble Kodo, Chieko Kojima contributed a mesmerising presence throughout the performance through her drumming and exquisitely expressive dance. Founding member of Taikoz, Riley Lee’s haunting shakuhachi playing provided moments of profundity, deep reflection and calmness. The rest of this 90-minute presentation was taken up with what the capacity audience was waiting for: high-energy performance, lavish costumes, huge drums and physical display. The performance did not disappoint and by the end as we watched the Taikoz powerfully striking their six odaiko (grand drums) in mesmerising unison, one could feel the palpable energy of the capacity audience poised to jump to their feet for its standing ovation. “Chieko Kojima’s solo ‘Onna-uchi’ (women’s side-on) drumming and dance of (traditional) Hana Hachijo shadowed with touching melancholy that represented to me the finest work of the night”
For more information contact Lee McIver - General Manager lee@synergyandtaikoz.com Ph+61 2 9557 5842 www.taikoz.com
Š Photos page 1, 2, 9, 10, 19, 20, 21 : Leo Bonne Š Photos page 5, 6, 7, 13, 16, 17, 20, 22 : Michael Christian