When actions speak louder than words: Japanese performance work with music by Oscar-winning composer Ryuichi Sakamoto heads to Hong Kong

Most people’s daily communication is verbal – through words, be they spoken or read. But non-verbal communication can be powerful.

The performing art, in various forms, from mime to puppetry to dance, have long investigated how to communicate meaning and emotion without words, but instead using movement and facial expressions, music or sound, visual effects and onstage props.

The art of being still

One of the works of Japanese avant-garde contemporary artist Shiro Takatani – known for his largely non-verbal installation and performance works – is among the innovative productions featured at the Beyond Multi-Arts Series presented by Hong Kong’s Leisure and Cultural Services Department, which runs from September 6 to December 14. .

A founding member of Kyoto-based artist collective Dumb Type, Takatani is the creative brain behind highly regarded pieces, including LIFE – fluid, invisible, inaudible … (2007), a collaboration with Oscar-winning composer Ryuichi Sakamoto, and Silence (2012), as well as the live performances La Chambre Claire (2008) and Chroma (2012).

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Takatani’s new work, ST/LL, another collaboration with Sakamoto, comes to the Auditorium at Kwai Tsing Theatre, Hong Kong, on September 20, 21 and 22.

The performance, perhaps best described as an extended installation, is a meditation on time and space.

It opens with a long table running perpendicularly from the audience resting in a shallow square pool of water on the stage. Behind it, a white screen rises.

The table looks set for dinner, but when a camera hovers to project the view from above, the audience suddenly realises that the wine glasses are scattered, with some lying on their side.

Yet dinner must conclude. A metronome ticks audibly above the high-pitched soundscape, counting out the seconds.

“I hope the audience will start to think about time and space through the experience of ‘stillness’,” Takatani says.

“I often use tables, chairs, dishes, cutlery and so on – seen normally in our daily lives – as props. I choose these everyday things, rather than special tools, as I want to represent a view of time and space which always exists around us.”

The action continues as the performers slowly appear. Two women take a seat at the table before proceeding to eat and drink invisible dishes, while a man clears the rest of the table. Time seems to be overlapping.

One of the women sits on the table and swings her legs while the other rests her head on the table. Everything happens very slowly and deliberately. Each element and movement has been designed to be reflected in the pool below, fracturing space.

The performance is backed by music and sound effects by Sakamoto, together with Marihiko Hara and Takuya Minami. Japanese actress Mayu Tsuruta, a nominee for the best supporting actress at the 1996 Japan Academy Prize Awards, also participates.

ST/LL premiered in France in 2015 and has since toured Belgium, Italy, Japan, Taiwan and Singapore.

Takatani says that working with Sakamoto changed – and clarified – his concept for the performance.

“First I started an exchange with Sakamoto about the concept of the performance, and then he sent me some sound and music files,” he says.

“The files included messages from Sakamoto which explained his own conception of the sound and music, and also his ideas of how to use it.

“Through such exchanges my idea for the performance shifted gradually.”

Takatani then discussed the concept individually with sound artists Hara and Minami, who brought all the musical elements together and finished the full soundscape.

“For me, the music and the sequential movement of the body is about creating feeling, and also to restructure time,” says Takatani.

“My starting point was to imagine a world in which time and space can be interchanged, and which puts the order of cause and result in parentheses. I asked each performer to think about movement and how to react to and express such an idea.”

Handle with care

Institute by physical theatre company, Gecko, another largely non-verbal performance, but with some strong language in English, German and French – partly with Chinese and English surtitles – comes to the Theatre, Hong Kong City, on September 6, 7 and 8.

The company, founded in 2001 and winner of the Total Theatre Award at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, is one of the leading physical theatre groups in the United Kingdom.

Known for its visceral, ambitious and visual shows, Gecko creates works through collaboration, experimentation and play.

Institute is an intimate, funny and moving exploration of human behaviour set to a backdrop of multilayered visuals, lighting and sound.

It depicts a world in which we are all too busy with high-pressure targets – and even higher expectations – and sometimes lose sight of what it means to care and be cared for.

The characters, damaged men who appear to be undergoing some kind of trauma therapy, sometimes link arms and dance in an unbroken chain, while at other times coerce and control each other almost like puppets.

The atmosphere changes from caring and supportive, to cruel – even sinister in a Kafkaesque way – along with the movements.

Living dolls

The story of fashion icon Coco Chanel, who, with her bold designs liberated women from their corsets, is communicated by puppets in a production that bears her name, Coco Chanel, by Jo Stromgren Kompani, from Norway, and Ulrike Quade Company, from The Netherlands.

The performance features hyperrealistic puppets that portray real-life historical people, but with a dash of wild imaginative theatre.

Setting the scene, at times the stage is hung with tailor’s dummies on strings, and a performer dons a cape ruched in layer upon layer of feathery white fabric that flutters to the stage floor.

Puppets are dressed in classic Chanel suits, hats and strings of pearls.

Through these puppets and performers on stage, the show tells of the eventful life of Chanel, who despite being an orphan rose to become part of the French upper class and a symbol of equality and freedom for women.

The show runs on October 4, 5 and 6 at the Hong Kong Cultural Centre.