Child's Play
Co. Un Yamada, a dance company and creative collective established in Tokyo in 2002, returned to the New National Theatre Tokyo last week to reprise their popular family-friendly production from 2021, “Obachetta.”
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In the programme notes for “…como el musguito en la piedra, ay si si si...” (“Like moss on a stone”), Pina Bausch’s final work before her sudden, unexpected death in 2009, dance writer Sarah Crompton insists the piece is “open to infinite interpretation,” that “[nothing] should be seen as explicit,” even the apparent allusions to Chile, where the German choreographer’s troupe took up temporary residence and conceived it as part of its famous World Cities series. Categorical interpretations might be off the table, but an abstract spirit of voyage and discovery does seem to infuse “Como el musguito,” inserting itself, however implicitly, in the dancers’ serene demeanour, which echoes hazy days under a hot sun, and the knowing glances they share, reverberations of the personal bonds they’ve cultivated during their journey as a company in the years since Bausch’s death. It’s certainly perceptible in their stated determination to, as company member Jonathan Fredrickson tells Crompton, “encapsulate what [the piece] has become, not where it came from.”
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Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch in “…como el musguito en la piedra, ay si, si, si…” Photograph by Bo Lahola
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Co. Un Yamada, a dance company and creative collective established in Tokyo in 2002, returned to the New National Theatre Tokyo last week to reprise their popular family-friendly production from 2021, “Obachetta.”
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