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Nicole LeGette
lab artist, 2007
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japan farewell
It was a long but uneventful return to Chicago. Now the scent of linden and lilac alights my fancy and i manage bicycle and house keys. How does one return? This temporary break from the ordinary everyday is an opportune moment to incur new habits, to diminish others—to again decide how to structure time. What dreams can I imagine for my life and how to extend this limitless realm to interactions with others?

I am amazed how internalized are the ritualized gestures surrounding my bicycle activities. It is a fluid mechanic, precise but without thought yet with a certain flare. this body-feeling familiarity makes me happy.

The last days in japan were a flurry of intense emotions that prohibited other activity and condensed periods of rushed activity. it rained a lot, a gentle rain, but one that affected mood and effort. I am so very thankful to have had this opportunity to go to japan for two months. It has been a significant experience in ways that can be clearly articulated but also in deeply mysterious currents. Things have shifted—I am not the same as before. Once again I extend my most sincere thanks to the Chicago Dancemakers Forum for the generous grant and support to explore and to investigate creatively in the ways I am drawn. THANK YOU!

Selected reflections;

Navigation is a prominent component to the everyday need to get around. The patterns and symptoms of navigation vary with each city, neighborhood, and time of day. for the most part, the rules that govern these patterns of navigation are unspoken, invisible, and mysterious yet experientially different. For me, as an outside individual, the encounter with these new patterns of navigation proved to be something of note. What I find fascinating is that these briefest of moments are mini-conversations with the other and primarily encompass the subtlest of body clues. If there is a smooth flow, the communication is nearly non-existent because each party somehow anticipates and accommodates the other’s actions and can adjust theirs so as to not interfere or impede continuous motion.  (like flocking in animals?) There can be a beautiful feeling of passage amongst a throng of people or an exercise of fits and starts with apologies. We are all individual agents going in various directions, speeds, etc. how do we negotiate the public ground? Riding a bicycle on a too narrow sidewalk, traversing Shinjuku train station during rush hour, walking to the super market. We constantly face multiple currents of inconsistent directional movement. It makes a big difference whether or not you KNOW where you are going and your budget of time! Perhaps the more successful tactic is like threading a needle….exhale, keep relaxed and softly focused but expand your peripheral vision and don’t look at faces. On the public street we look at faces if there is a breakdown or impediment to the flow. Do not make trouble where it doesn't exist.

Once, deep in the night as I slept on the floor, the ground suddenly turned to water. the solid ground destabilized as water permeates sand, as if I fell asleep on the beach and the tide came in.. I awake, startled, confused, not sure what to do and stand in the bathroom doorway until it passes. A tremor from an earthquake not far from tokyo.

Mute--I have lost access to verbal language. Literally speechless or dumbfounded when required to speak in English or my infantile Japanese. In general, I prefer to listen, observe, to speak less and wonder if this was apparent in my early development of language? Especially being in a new environment where there is so much to absorb through all of the senses, my desire to interject through verbal language withers. I become enlivened when the other party shows interest to employ modes of communication rather than verbal language. What can we discover if we de-emphasize verbal and visual and revitalize the other senses for communication within the public domain?



In class, yoshito ohno speaks in tangents. He presents several images from nature, personal history, art books, current news stories, etc. you are usually given a simple prop and a basic gesture to work with and then the music starts and you enter into the dance for 2-5 minutes at a time. With or without translation into English, to grasp yoshito’s theme is an act of interpretation—finding the thread woven between the examples. Although each example is a world of nuance of its own adding to the repository of subtlety and complexity. The clearest example comes not from yoshito’s words  (although I note their value) but rather the effectiveness of his body. Somehow all is eloquently communicated beyond language—directly from body to body. I ‘understand’ what he is conveying. I cannot interpret or intuit, but it is somehow passed into me? as I attend my last class of this visit I am deeply saddened, more-so than ever before, because I will not have access to this special mode of investigation and communication.

At this time in class, Natsu nakajima primarily emphasizes the kinetic sense of the body in movement. More formal considerations in many ways, but always fuelled with the sub-current of imagination/energy/emotion, etc. that is characteristic of butoh. Her teaching varies depending on the needs of her students but she always incorporates body/energetic maintenance massage. As a person and in her art she can be very direct, stern, uncompromising but I have also benefited from her immense generosity, kindness, and genuineness. she is a type of woman from another era that we don't encounter very often in japan or US. .In her classes with developmentally challenge students she radiates a warmth and playfulness matched by her years of experience. Everyone enjoys and I marvel at her ease and effectiveness. She hosted my farewell party at her apartment with 3 of her dancers and my other friend. Not one to indulge formalities or overt emotions, our parting was more of a pause in our continued interactions rather than a break.

I had the good fortune to meet mr. Kazuo Ohno. At 101.5 yrs. Old, the oldest person I have ever met. His eyes are closed and he remains in bed but his vitality and strong spirit is abundant. Doctors say he has a heart of a 20 year old, but his breath is becoming labored. His posture is not turning inward as some as they age, rather his heart, throat, and face are rotated up and a bit to the right. His glowing vibrancy permeating the delicate skin. Finally his evocative hands seem to be contentedly at rest on his chest and now the dance is found at his throat. I am reminded of a section in La Argentina where Ohno drapes his shirtless torso over a grand piano. He gazes upward focusing our gaze on his diaphragm and ribcage. We see each life-breath activating the torso. Now the dance more modest, as we focus on his throat we see each life-breath and its insistence to live. (I believe this section of his dance was called something like, ‘between heaven and earth’??)

There are many other stories to share, like how I met akaji maru, the renegade founder of dairakudakan, but I have already asked too much of your time. Thank you for your attention to read this selection of reflections. I look forward to more encounters as I develop my project and the solo dance aspect to be performed in September. Stay tuned…www.chicagodancemakers.org, www.blushingpoppy.org. Thank you!

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