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Contemporary Magazine, Winter 2007
Los Angeles Times, March 18, 2004 (Donna Perlmutter)
LA Weekly, March 18, 2004 (Sara Wolf)
Santa Fe New Mexican, November 28, 2003
LA Weekly, July 12, 2002 (Peter Frank)
LA Weekly
July 12, 2002
Performance Pick of the Week - "Doctor Chi!"
by Peter Frank, Performance Critic
Michael Sakamoto has been prominent on the Los Angeles performance scene for everything from his butoh-adjacent bodywork to his management-level involvement with various one-shot and ongoing perfo-projects. But Sakamoto's heart of hearts seems to belong to Doctor Chi! (I think the exclamation point is optional, but ain't taking any chances.) The good no, bad doctor has become Sakamoto's alter ego, a figure purportedly spawned in the throes of German cinematic expressionism but so enduring (or at least durable) that he survived the Nazis, the Cold War, and, most remarkable of all, Hollywood. Ol' Chi(!) is a kind of Fantomas-meets-Fu Manchu-meets Nosferatu-meets Brainiac character, a powerful necromancer bent on ruling the world, one city at a time. Weimar-era Berlin was his original beat, as you can imagine, but after World War 11 certain nouvelle vagues types transported his particular brand of evilÑfierce, diabolical, but human and vulnerable at its core (hey, the guy was/is only doing it for love)Ñto Paris. Actually, Doctor Chi (yeah, yeah!) was adapted and adopted by any number of cineastic master-(and not~ master) minds, including American and Japanese horror-flick makers lan Fleming wannabes, and who knows who else.
Sakamoto backs up his live, er, recreation-cum-retrospective of the Doctor Chi! legacy realized with appropriate verve by local perfo-meisters such as Franc Baliton, Michael Morrissey, Rochelle Fabb and Jill Miller Ñwith exhaustive documentation on display in another 18th Street Arts Complex space. Thus, in one swell foop, Michael Sakamoto has rewritten film history and introduced Chi! Theory into the larger discourse. Or, to put it another way, thanks to Sakamoto, the Chi! has hit the fans.