Heaven and Earth, April 28th 2007

The performance had been labeled as an encounter between Asian and Western dance. Already, the Asian label seemed dubious (were they talking about traditional Japanese, Chinese, Vietnamese dances? Butoh? Ha! I would pay to see a butoh performance in Houston). At its best, it was pedestrian, sentimental and trite.

All that it was really was Western dance with hand gestures that said "Wa! Look at me, I'm doing kung fu," Asian-esque costumes, the thing accompanied by the soundtrack of The Last Samurai (yes, the insulting Tom Cruise movie) and of various Hong Kong wuxia movies (which are themselves inspired by the soundtrack of various Martin Scorsese and American period movies of the 1950s, which makes you wonder why Asianized western music to appeal to the general taste)(Speaking of which, the soundtrack to the Lone Wolf and Cub movie series is a more interesting take, riffing on the music of Ennio Morricone for Sergio Leone movies, which were themselves inspired by Akira Kurosawa's jidai gekki).

In the end, only the solo and duo pieces saved the performance. You had a much better sense of space, the body and their relationship to each other, a better sense of a form of syntax in dance. And none of that Orientalized western music (they used a mix of techno music and Taiko drums).