DANCE/San Francisco
"Ame to Ame"
August 6,7,13, 14, 8pm

Fresh from a world premiere in Berlin this July, inkBoat brings "Ame to Ame" to the U.S.

The theme of the work is based on a note scribbled by John Keats, in the margins of his copy of "Paradise Lost":

"One of the most mysterious of semi-speculations is, one would suppose, that of one Mind's imagining into another."

The 50-minute duet explores the misunderstandings that occur between a single soul in separate bodies. Or - we think that's the main point, anyway. inkBoat gets this month's vote for 'mostly incomprehensible, but strangely interesting, show description.'

Check it out: Two dancers -- Shinichi MOMO Koga (USA) and Yuko Kaseki (Japan) -- hurl their bodies into the abyss to find each other, but each slips from the others grasp. The furniture is disturbed when physicalized memories manifest as toothy sharks or handfuls of wet grass. Twisting in and out of sync, the bodies find and lose each other. One means "candy" and the other means "rain." They speak the same word: ame. Insistence upon meaning loses the point. Only this undecipherable, formless beauty grows when it's watered, when it's fed. The dancers are hot headed. One gently props the other to keep her from falling through the sky. "Ame to Ame" challenges us to walk on clouds, provoking the real topic: the return to earth.

That's not a show description, that's a koan. Bit of a twisted, surreal, peppermint-LSD-laced koan, but there you are. Until -- thud.

Find it: Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
701 Mission Street
San Francisco, CA 94103
Get info: (415) 982-8522

Find other dance/theatre events worldwide, in the August 2004 issue of "Arte Six".