Michael Sakamoto - Interdisciplinary Artist

LA Weekly
August 6, 1999

Theater Review - "Glorious Day for an Unknown Woman"

by Luis Reyes, Theater Writer

Michael Sakamoto's captivating solo performance uses a fair amount of symbolism as it follows the heights and travails of an obscure Japanese filmmaker and silent film narrator, or benshi, named Musei, who pays bittersweet homage to the actresses he loved and glorified on film. This butoh-dance experience depicts three distinct periods of the artist's life - his roots on the Japanese stage and as a burgeoning filmmaker, an interim period in France where he graced the cabaret stage and eventually received carte blanche artist rights during the German occupation, and his later years in America where he became disillusioned with Hollywood and clung desperately to his identity as a film director.

Sakamoto presents the three acts in cyclical form, each period involving the same series of dance movements, while the lighting, sound and costumes shift accordingly. A fascinating use of film bridges the gap between the esoteric and accessible, grounding the work for people unfamiliar with the form. The sharp, almost robotic motions of the butoh style engross; Sakamoto speaks entire passages with a single movement, subtly striking deep chords.

But the piece's real power derives from the extensive program notes on which his stage conceit depends, resulting in an intelligent, emotionally stirring story that's wrought with pathos, though thankfully not mired in it.