No perfection

She suddenly appeared out of nowhere and was standing in front of me and greeting me. It took me a few seconds to register. This face, this voice, Japan? No. A fan? No. Paris… Izumi!!! Her raspy voice!!!

I hadn’t seen her since my concert at the Café de la Danse where she danced on Second Breath. After a minute, I had learned that she had just auditioned for Noism the same afternoon, that she was attending tonight’s show to find out whether she liked Jo’s work and that she just got married ten days before!

I knew her to be a high speed motion from one part of the globe to another, but I never imagined I'd be speaking to her in Tokyo before a Noism performance!

There is no coincidence, is there?

Jo couldn’t believe his eyes when I came to greet him and ‘introduced’ Izumi as a friend.

He thought everybody knew everybody in Paris, but didn’t expect the world to be that small…

He apparently liked Izumi’s dancing. But since she had never seen any of his work, he offered her to come and see PLAY 2 PLAY.

The piece impressed her and she accepted the offer. It will be so funny to all meet again in Niigata for a new project!

This surprise encounter eased my discomfort at watching PLAY 2 PLAY. The piece was slowly claiming a life of its own; I could hardly recognize it although it was the same choreography, set design and music...

Now that I am taking some distance emotionally from the whole project, I can finally see the imbalance. There’s no such a thing as perfection in art,  although I think this imbalance came from the fact that the dancers have to adjust to a different stage in each city. 

Niigata’s was the widest stage, while Shizuoka and Tokyo are much smaller theatres. The dancers have to focus on the spacing and it affects in their dancing.

We’ll see what they do tomorrow. But I left the theatre with a sense of frustration. Jo also seemed not so happy, but we couldn’t speak that much as I had wished. He’s got so many people to see that it was a miracle I could even exchange a few words with him today.