Kaidan: A Ghost Story

January 22nd 2007 12:00 am | Theatre | Review - By Diana Simmonds

A creative mind at the top of its form.

In essence, the collaboration between choreographer Meryl Tankard and Ian Cleworth's TaikOz drumming ensemble is sublime. The work of a soaring imagination is signalled from the opening moments of Kaidan when shakuhachi master Riley Lee, softly lit at the edge of the Drama Theatre's wide stage, plays a melancholy, autumnal refrain on the Japanese bamboo flute.

Gradually a wraithlike figure becomes visible through a scrim on which are projected fleeting images of water: sparkling, bubbling, flowing, swirling. Is the figure a fish? a ghost? imagined? a memory? or wisps of smoke from burning leaves?

The answer is yes, no, all, none and whatever the mind creates. These meditative thoughts, coupled with the hypnotic music and movement, act to draw in the audience's concentration towards the site of the action to come and away from the other, over-stimulated world of minutes before: the foyer's gossip, laughter, drinks and competition.

It is a gambit that quickly brings the audience closer to the performers, being not dissimilar to the daily rituals both the drummers and dancers go through before launching into performance. Within minutes the community is unusually united on both sides of the footlights. This is just as well, because in what follows there's a lot to concentrate on.

The Japanese story on which Kaidan is based tells of a woman whose unwilling heart leads to tragedy and revenge. She has to give up her heirloom mirror to be melted down, with the mirrors of other village women, to help repair a broken temple bell. She does not give generously, however, and the mirror will not melt. Being Japanese and consumed with guilt, she has no choice but to kill herself. But there is a sting in the tale of this apparent act of contrition: riches are promised to the villagers but greed prevails and they do not live happily ever after.

Although Tankard has chosen a strong narrative for this new work it's not allowed to get in the way of the viewer's participation nor her own powerful sense of theatre and spectacle. Rather it serves the dancers and musicians and the elements of human behaviour Tankard chooses to explore. Duality and contradiction seem to be high on her agenda: the fragility of paper fans and mutability of smoke and water are in compelling contrast to the intense physicality and discipline of the drummers whose credo, "to beat with every muscle, bone and sinew in our bodies, with an open and joyous spirit," is vividly demonstrated in their performance.

Duality also informs the choreography: long-time Tankard favourite Sarah-Jayne Howard is a glorious pale amazon whose physique lends itself equally to the graceful leaps and acrobatics of her role as the wraith-woman, while her technique and sensibility make her equally capable of the subtleties, humour and emotion which lie at the heart of Tankard's style.

Duality is also at the heart of one of the most memorable sequences in the work: a disturbing yet beautiful inversion of classical ballet's pas de deux. A black-clad male dancer manipulates the powerful yet powerless Howard in the manner of a bunraku puppet: he directs her gaze with a hand at her neck, her limbs are raised and lowered at his direction. Some moments are gentle and reflective, others are violently dismissive. The viewer can read much into the relationship between these two and none of it is happy.

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