{"id":710,"date":"2009-02-06T17:42:43","date_gmt":"2009-02-06T17:42:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp\/2009\/02\/shadow_play.html"},"modified":"2009-02-06T17:42:43","modified_gmt":"2009-02-06T17:42:43","slug":"shadow_play","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/2009\/02\/shadow_play.html","title":{"rendered":"Shadow play"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here in Britain we’re often accused of living in the past. This week it’s true – specifically 1978, our winter of discontent. There have been unexpected snowfalls, London’s public transport ground to a halt, post went undelivered and trash uncollected. And last night the power failed, so we sat around with candles and red wine – free from the laptop at last.
\nDim light and shadows have not only their consolations but their beauty. I’d been thinking about this since seeing Shun-kin<\/a><\/em>, the latest show by Complicite. It isn’t a huge advance by director Simon McBurney, who marries a physical style of theatre to bogglingly sophisticated ideas about the way in which our minds construct the world. Shun-kin <\/em>is interested in the way our senses apprehend our surroundings, and offers a beautiful evening in the theatre that reminds us of the power of shadows. A collaboration with Tokyo’s Setagaya Public Theatre, it is based on two 1933 texts by Jun’ichiro Tanizaki. One is a poetic fan letter to darkness, In Praise of Shadows<\/em>; the other a pervy, postmodern fake biography about a blind musician and her devoted manservant.
\nThroughout Shun-kin<\/em>, light is curtailed, tightly focused, its levels often low. It’s a risky strategy in a big auditorium, but it focuses attention wonderfully. Drawn to the glimmers, we hover there: as a capricious puppet rages for attention, or as a voice-over artist surreptitiously peers at a message from her lover on the mobile, lit only by a small desk light. Shadowy emotions, sharpened senses, flourish in the strictly rationed lamplight.
\nI don’t want to sound like a sheep, but I like my attention being manipulated in this way at the theatre. Good lighting is poetic but also acts like a nudge – look here, closer, longer. Lighting design is an under-praised art – always the first credit to be cut when a reviewer starts running out of words. But Paul Anderson’s work on Shun-kin <\/em>deserves a shout, and already this year I’ve seen a couple of wonderfully evocative designs by Neil Austin<\/a>: a disorienting misty coastscape in Mrs Affleck<\/a><\/em>, where Ibsen goes to England, and a hard, sharp design for Piaf<\/a>, light glinting from the coal-hard walls.
\nLighting has a major part to play in dance, of course, where the stage has often to be kept clear. Designers like Lucy Carter <\/a>(who works with ubergeek Wayne McGregor) and Michael Hulls (Russell Maliphant’s longtime collaborator) do marvels with architecture, space and texture, providing a spatial and emotional journey through a piece. And it’s this invitation to look, and to look again, that is so compelling.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here in Britain we’re often accused of living in the past. This week it’s true – specifically 1978, our winter of discontent. There have been unexpected snowfalls, London’s public transport ground to a halt, post went undelivered and trash uncollected. And last night the power failed, so we sat around with candles and red wine […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-710","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/710","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=710"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/710\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}