Unbearable Darkness

Eclectic and unpredictable artist Choy Ka Fai returns to inaugurate the Digitalive section of the Romaeuropa Festival. After mixing Asian shamanism and vogueing in his fiery Yishun is Burning, the Singaporean choreographer and video artist now builds a new experiment in cybernetic dance and paranormal encounter. Unbearable Darkness focuses on Butoh dance: using a spiritual medium, motion capture and a digital avatar, Choy Ka Fai aims to evoke the master Tatsumi Hijikata – the artist who, more than any other, founded and influenced the development of the Butoh genre, born in the late 1950s as a form of expression against the dominant culture of post-war Japan. Ankoku Butoh, ‘the dance of darkness’ as Hijikata often called it, is a practice that retains a rebellious potential, according to Ka Fai: it opposes the superiority of Western dance cultures and affirms a new choreographic language for the Asian body. The themes of alienation, dehumanization and loss of identity that have been addressed by the most important Butoh proponents, seem to migrate into the images and codes generated by digital technologies, creating a new and intense immersive experience and generating an unprecedented review of the Hijakata’s legacy and relation to contemporary Asian culture.