Review: Dance Company Lasta: Naraku 奈落 (Abyss), Coronet Theatre

Dance Company Lasta come from Tokyo to the Coronet Theatre for only a handful of performances this month, with their stunningly sensual dance production, Naraku 奈落 (Abyss). Led by Artistic Director Yoshimitsu Kushida, it’s a strikingly innovative and impressive performance from a seriously talented ensemble (Satoshi Nakagawa, Miwa Motojima, Yumika Yasuoka, Mana Tazaki, Riku Ogawa, Aoi Okamoto).

A man sits motionless at a desk as his divided dream self articulates his thoughts and secret desires through the dance. Beginning with only gentle breathing and mindful silence, it soon becomes a story of intoxicating relationships, tensions, temptations and conflicting energies, told with breathtaking physicality and arresting aesthetics. Segments of narrative fit together like snapshots to relay his fragmented experience, disclosing sensual, evocative and searingly powerful engagements in an intricate layering of realities. 

The set is made up of a very real, solid desk, with two chairs atop a traditional rug, and initially a bookcase with doors wide open and books scattered across the room. It’s a space where something has happened, and signals orderliness disrupted; a material orderliness that is quickly contrasted by the barely controlled passion in the dream dance that it contains. As the incredibly agile and accomplished dancers perform, bodies lean against it, stand upon it, and redefine the conventional through fervid emotion and action. Books are torn from shelves in ardent engagements, and tradition is overthrown by the potency of extraordinary contemporary dance. 

There is a sizzling sense of transgression throughout as the piece explores the tensions and shifting dynamics of human relationships and desires. Every inch of the space is covered, as abusive behaviours are depicted in unnatural movement that sees dancers become object-like, rigid and dehumanised; males confront each other with violent aggression, possessive over a female; women dance together supportively and to the side, evoking a sense of removed, collaborative gentleness. At other times, moments of conventional dance, hand in hand and hand on hips, suggest a different reality. As we are drawn into the surreal scenes from this individual’s psyche, boundaries between time and place, recollections and imaginings are fascinatingly blurred. 

Temporal ambiguity adds to the uncertain quality of the piece as the narrative comes full circle and restarts. The beautiful soundscape, with composition by Motoi Matsuda, is additionally haunting and evocative, sliding from eerie otherworldliness to a diminished, visceral hum, to classical tones, as memories materialise and fantasies change form.

For the audience, the atmosphere is at times almost voyeuristic: the fourth wall becomes more like a gauze as the sensual story becomes teasingly tangible. We’re inches away from recognisable, heightened emotion and a vibrant, familiar physicality in the choreography that is sometimes brutal, sometimes deeply sensitive, and communicated through bodies that veer from weaponised and solidly substantial to implausibly ethereal. It’s bewitching.

As the climax approaches, an almost fever dream takes over, at the edge of the abyss of human decline: scarlet colouring floods the stage, creating a devilish Hell, where the dancers’ bodies twist and intertwine in grotesque shapes reminiscent of a Hieronymus Bosch fantasy world. It’s an intense and affective combination of stagecraft, where precision lighting (Yoshimitsu Koshida and Ros Chase), movement and music combine to create superb theatricality and sensory electricity.

Naraku 奈落 (Abyss) is a hugely exciting production that challenges normality, reimagining ways to articulate emotional understanding through physical enactment. It offers a truly extraordinary performance from a dazzlingly gifted company.

Produced by Dance Company Lasta
Artistic Director: Yoshimitsu Kushida
Composer: Motoi Matsuda
Costume Design: hitoha.nasu & Grelot Arbre Co. Ltd.
London Lighting Design: Yoshimitsu Koshida and Ros Chase

Naraku 奈落 (Abyss) plays at The Coronet Theatre until Saturday September 20.