February 14, 2025
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post.
If we’re going to celebrate something on this Valentine’s Day, let’s celebrate dance. Take this performance by Dai Matsuoka with Jeffrey Ziegler on the cello. Filmed in black and white with great stone structures on the stage, Matsuoka plays with shadow. He moves through space, around the pillars sometimes slowly and sometimes quickly. The viewer must ask what these actions mean. Why the presence of stone? If there is metaphor, what does it seem to say? Why does Matsuoka use slow or quick movements? Why does he sometimes bend in irrational or unnatural ways, while at other times he move with the fluidity of water? I assume that Matsuoka performs each action with incredible precision.
For me, this piece is about the growth of humans. Down to the very cello notes we focus entirely on elements: body, air, stone, surface, floor, white, black, vibration, etc. The human body moves between shadowed pillars of stones with wonder and amazement, perhaps even deifying the statues. It makes me ask how humans developed notions of space, of nature, and of self. How does light interact with perceptions of beauty and deity?
Dance involves both precision and emotion. These seeming opposites actually maintain balance, though. Balance itself is momentary, precarious. The dancer stands, pauses, holds a form but that form inevitably transforms, much like the environment, or even society. The dancer realizes that he, too, must change, evolve, morph. A dancer moves through space as if a conduit or electrical current. He brings us from shadow into light.
As Matsuoka transitions into the brightly lit area nearer the cello, he finds a mirrored boulder. He sees himself, meets reality. This causes pain as well as wonder. Confusion. Confronting the human situation often feels abrupt, ugly, terrifying. But it also can be beautiful, fluid, intuitive. The dancer’s motions give us each reaction without the need for words. Matsuoka’s attire reminds me of fish scales, perhaps a nod to biological development and evolution. Indeed, even in this short piece, biology interacts, layers, and connects.
Matsuoka folds and unfolds around each element, never touching them, as if to say that wonderful beings exist in the world and are always in conversation but can never truly know each other. Senses can do only so much. We are others in a world of others.
What I love about dance is juxtaposition. As the dancer twirls: the rocks remain. The dancer reaches, elevates: the rocks remain. The dancer changes: do the rocks change? If so, it is only by the interaction of the dancer and the music that they change. These juxtaposed items collaborate in the same way that space and elements collaborate. Everything changes in the presence of another. Light becomes power and insight. Rocks become reflections, obstacles, and enigmas.
In the final scene, Matsuoka moves into a well-lit corner of the room. There is nothing here but his own shadow. The dancer finds himself at the center of himself, finds himself folded into corners and is afraid. With hands bound overhead, the dancer once again confronts the mirrored boulder. Perhaps the audience has witnessed birth, life and death: a cycle of mystery and woe: an eternal cycle. Matsuoka returns to the form of a ball, mimicking those boulders, mimicking a circle, mimicking the beginning and the end.
Dance is filled with metaphor. Like any language, it speaks with signs and symbols. And like any language, it is both complete and incomplete. Dance can be for the self alone, like a diary entry. Or, sometimes dance requires an audience, like the space between an author and a reader. Because I crave movement myself, dance reminds me of the full power of language. It moves within us and around us. Language should never be taken for granted. And that, in a nutshell, is why I love dance.
Thanks to Paola Prestini (composer), Dai Matsuoka (dancer), and Jeffrey Ziegler (cello) for this tremendous piece.
Photo credit: Shutterstock/ Inara Prusakova
