K-BALLET opto is a joint production of K-Ballet Company (Bunkamura Orchard Hall's franchise company) and Bunkamura, which presents new works that go beyond the classics and showcases diverse appeals of dance. For the second production, following the inaugural performance "Petit Collection," the franchise company K-BALLET Company Bunkamura/Orchard Hall Artistic Director Tetsuya Kumakawa chose the theme of plastic out of a deep desire to improve the global environment as a human being living in the modern age. First of all, I would like to commend the spirit of the production team and performers for tackling the SDGs head-on using the plastic bottles and plastic umbrellas that continue to flood the world. 

The first piece was "PET Bottle Labyrinth," choreographed by Alessio Silvestrin, an Italian choreographer living in Japan. The dancers move multiple movable stands made of countless plastic bottles to various positions depending on the scene. They may represent a "maze (mei-ro: lost in path) / labyrinth (mei-kyu: lost in palace) of plastic bottles" that reveals new paths as the dancers move forward. When the dancers posed behind these screens, the light was diffused by the cross sections of the plastic bottles, blurring the outlines of the dancers and making them appear illusory. About 10,000 of these PET (Poly-ethylene-terephthalate) bottles were collected with the cooperation of a recycling company, and the staff themselves cleaned them and used them in the stage design. 

The sound that seemed to be a roar was the organ piece "Volumina" (1961/1962) by György Ligeti, a Hungarian-Austrian contemporary musician who survived the Nazi Holocaust. The music has no melody or rhythm, and all the keys of the organ are held at the elbow, producing diverse masses of sound all at once, creating a noise-like sound. Ligeti's music was a favorite of film genius Stanley Kubrick. This avant-garde music and the fantastic visual effect of plastic bottles reflecting light glare give the piece a retro and mysterious atmosphere reminiscent of "2001: A Space Odyssey" and other science fiction films of the 1960s. 

The other main musical piece Silvestrin employed was the organ piece "Prelude and Fugue in E Minor, BWV. 548 (Wedge)" by Johann Sebastian Bach, which he describes as evoking the space inside a plastic bottle with the wind-infused sound of a pipe organ. a group dance of men, that of women, and that of men and women teaming up unfolds as if they fit the thematic phrases being gradually developed in music. Silvestrin, who studied music as well as dance, says that he considers the structure of his choreography based on the permutations in music. Therefore, his choreography was as orderly as geometry. His exquisite choreography, as if it were being generated one part after another by a knitting machine, left a intensive impression of linearity in the formations and the trajectories drawn by the dancers. Julien MacKay of the Munich Ballet Principal, who played the leading role of the young monk, showed dynamic jumps and pirouettes, and he constantly changed partners with Nozomi Iijima and then with Sena Hidaka, carefully supporting their fluid movements and leading them into more graceful poses. 

Although plastic bottles are produced inexhaustibly for the convenience of mankind, the recycling system is incomplete, and the bottles continue to increase as waste. MacKay's melancholic expression, as if he were concerned about the current state of environmental destruction, was also appropriate for this piece, and his characterization was superb, not only as a prince in a classical ballet, but also as a young man born in the modern age with his own issues. The female dancers' off-balance poses with one leg raised high in pointe, which is unique to contemporary ballet, were very beautiful. The K-BALLET dancers' group dances were generally as physically gifted as the soloists, and they handled Silvestrin's intricate choreography with ease. 

The dancers' limbs and heads soon began to be covered with plastic bottles, which multiplied on Iijima's, Hidaka's, and MacKay's bodies. The dancers with plastic bottles attached to their bodies danced in male-female pairs, but it seemed that the smooth movements of the dancers were being interfered with. Then, the plastic bottle "nymphs," led by Shohei Horiuchi, takes control of the scene, and, with increasing momentum, captures Iijima and Hidaka. Horiuchi had multiple plastic bottles "growing" on his back, making him look like a stegosaurus with bony plates lining his back. The fight scene between him and MacKay was a prestigious duet using the body language of contemporary ballet, but it also had a surrealistic feel, as if the righteous hero in a video game was confronting a dinosaur character. When MacKay squeezed a plastic bottle in his hand, the people seemed to be freed from the spell of the plastic bottle and somehow returned to their original state. 

One of the most impressive scenes with the plastic bottle screens was the one in which two of them were placed side by side and rotated like a propeller in a circle around the point of contact, with Iijima and Hidaka dancing led by a woman whose upper body was covered with a plastic sphere, while MacKay watched them move along. The way they walked nonchalantly on their long journey, they seemed to be wandering in search of a new place, or perhaps they were searching for a new mechanism that could coexist with plastic bottles.

Toward the end of the piece, the solemn sound of Bach's organ music used in the first half (Prelude) was heard again (Fugue), and finally the music changed to a strong beat in the style of 70s disco. MacKay and the other dancers all continued to dance contemporary ballet steps that mismatched the funky tune. The audience seats flashed as if reflecting mirror balls, and huge alphabet letters assembled from plastic bottles repeatedly descended from and ascended to the ceiling of the stage. Words like "PET," "PARTY," and "PEOPLE" were seen. Finally, a collection of plastic bottles in the shape of the upper half of the question mark "?" descended, and a woman wrapped in the plastic sphere entered beneath it to complete the mark "?," when the stage went dark. I sensed a poignant message: "Is it OK if it is OK for now," or "Should we do nothing while leaving environmental problems to the next generation?" 

The second piece was "Vinyl Umbrella Komachi" by Rei Watanabe, who also serves as dance director of K-BALLET COMPANY and dance director of K-BALLET Opto. The original idea for this piece was taken from "Sotoba Komachi," one of the pieces in the "Modern Noh Play Collection," in which Yukio Mishima adapted Noh plays by Kan'ami, as well as Shogo Ota's "Komachi Fuden. 

A man sits in front of the lower part of the stage and counts plastic umbrellas one by one from the interval to the end of the performance. The plastic umbrellas are said to be reused from those actually thrown away on the side of the road. When the curtain opens, three men in black suits (Shoya Ishibashi, Kei Sugino, and Ren Kuriyama) pick up umbrellas that have fallen in the park and go to give them to the man. 

Behind the stage, vinyl gods dressed in bubble wrap cushioning material stand holding vinyl umbrellas. The slim bodies of the dancers look plump and cute, like loose characters. They are buffeted by a strong wind that blows from the lower part of the stage, and they keep moving backward and forward against the wind. The added movement, which pushed those on roller skates back farther, was visually interesting. When the wind reached its maximum strength, a sudden change was heard in the noise of the city and an old woman, Komachi (Ayumi Shiraishi), sitting in a pram in a park in the middle of the city. If you look closely, her head is covered with white wig made of bubble wrap cushioning material, which is, with yellow electric lights in it, tied up high like Marie Antoinette's. She picks up umbrellas that have fallen in the park, and with slow movements, checks whether they can be opened and closed, and spins them around to put them away in a wheelbarrow. Then three men in black suits, who appeared in the beginning, start messing with her. Their movements are figurative like a pantomime in accordance with music and conversing with their entire bodies as if we could hear a line, "What are you doing, Grandma? In this scene, Taiju Takano, who was in charge of the planning, composition, and script, seems to have been recreating on stage an image of an old woman he used to see every day in the park when he was in elementary school. 

As the old woman Komachi reminisced about the old days, the dainty Komachi (Mina Kobayashi) in her prime also appeared. She wore a black tulle skirt above her knees, a vinyl umbrella, and geta or high Japanese clogs. She walked in unison with the old woman Komachi, clattering and wiggling her steps in a unique Japanese style that could only be achieved with geta. As the old Komachi immersed herself in the illusion, the vinyl buffer wig, mesh cape, and clogs were removed by the gods, and she became lighter in body and mind, and looked younger than ever. 

The movable grand staircase splits in two, and Ensign Fukakusa (Masaya Yamamoto), Komachi's love interest, appears from within. His entire body is wrapped in a vinyl outer shell, and the vinyl glints in the light, a futuristic military uniform. To the accompaniment of string music, he mimes and dances in a dense manner, expressing his ardent love for the old Komachi. She, too, confides her feelings to him. 

Her recollections also take her back to the most glamorous scene of the ball at the Rokumeikan. The chandelier on the ceiling made of multiple plastic umbrellas was a kitschy and interesting touch. On the ground, the vinyl gods perform a wild and powerful group dance, while Komachi and Ensign, who are in love with each other, also perform a brilliant duet. Throughout the entire piece, the gods express Komachi's feelings, sometimes softly lifting Shiraishi and Kobayashi, stretching and dancing to the dramatic swells of the music, and also playing the role of behind-the-scenes supporters, moving large and small props around. 

When Komachi played Isezakicho Blues on the gramophone, with Mina Aoe's sultry breath, the lighting turned a glossy purple, and the space inside the grand staircase became two rooms. In one room, the young Komachi and the Ensign are facing a table and talking to each other using body language. In the other room, male deities embrace each other in a passionate manner. Is this an homage to Yukio Mishima's "Confessions of a Mask"? 

Toward the end, when Komachi's delusion grows and she dances again with the Ensign in his younger form, immersed in memories of their former romance, Shiraishi, Kobayashi, and Yamamoto dance together, creating a fantastically beautiful scene that could only be achieved through dance. Ayumi Shiraishi's outstanding performance made the old woman's recollection of her past love seem realistic. Yamamoto's crisp and expressive dancing made Ensign Fukakusa look like an attractive male figure, and Kobayashi, who played the young Komachi, showed the radiance of her love for the Ensign with her highly technical and beautiful movements. The ensemble surrounding the main cast members in the lyrical group dance was also powerful and well worth seeing. 

Komachi, in a dreamy state, danced violently with the vinyl gods to the volume and accelerated tempo of Grieg's "In the Hall of the Mountain King," finally collapsing to the floor as if in a delirium. When the curtain rose again, Komachi was present in the sky in a white dress so long that its hem spread across the floor. This costume, which became a part of the stage design, was a project called "Art Shimatsu (ato: afterwards + shimatsu: cleaning-up)," and was made by reusing curtains used in Yasumasa Morimura's art exhibition.

The figurative and theatrical choreography of "Plastic Umbrella Komachi" contrasts sharply with the highly abstract "Plastic Bottle Labyrinth. Both works boldly tackle the difficult theme of environmental destruction, visually highlighting the seriousness of this issue and further expanding the possibilities of contemporary dance expression. 

(January 8 and 9, 2023, KAAT Kanagawa Arts Theatre)