June 21, 2000

Japanese performance artists Eiko and Koma returned to the American Dance Festival with a new commissioned work, When Nights Were Dark. Well-named. If you weren’t sitting in the front third of the auditorium, you had little chance of making out what was happening on stage, thanks to the very artistic, but also very dim, lighting.

Eiko and Koma specialize in a movement style so slow that you have difficulty seeing them move at all. Even during the initial bows, your eyes begin to play tricks on you. Their bodies seem to flicker from pose to pose, almost a strobe effect.

Once robed and installed on the set custom designed for the piece, they are virtually invisible. For a long, measureless time, you seem to be looking at a tree dipping branches into a stream. The branches sway a bit, the trunk bends, the water ripples, the rocks move.

Your eyes, learning what to look for, discern a body, two bodies, among the rocks. A face, a hand, a shoulder emerge, then are reabsorbed, only to appear again at another place as another part of the scene.

The whole thing is so enigmatic, the action so slow, that your mind begins to manufacture narrative structure. The tree is transformed into a dragon’s head swallowing the dancers, then a rich bed in which two lovers writhe. At some point during this process, they seem to shed their oriental robes. Nearly naked, their bodies are marginally easier to make out.

Eiko & Koma’s performances are unquestionably masterpieces of lighting, costuming and self-control. However, if the artists’ intention is to teach the Western mind a Zen-like patience, it’s not working on these reviewers. When Nights Were Dark is about as exciting as watching grass grow —fascinating, but only if you ate the right mushroom.

— A. Maurer & R.Wright