Michael Sakamoto - Interdisciplinary Artist

San Francisco Bay Guardian
June 25, 2003

A Whiter Shade of Pale: Butoh Finds a Lighter Side

by Rita Felciano, Dance Critic

...Butoh can actually be very funny. Once artists realized the breadth of Butoh's expressive range, some of them started veering away from the semiabstract pieces that have dominated stages for almost a generation. Two of those artists, Shinichi Momo Koga and Michael Sakamoto, recently showed Butoh-infused theater works in San Francisco that excellently demonstrate Butoh's potential...

Sakamoto's spellbinding Glorious Day for an Unknown Woman tells the story of a benshi (a Japanese silent-film narrator) who pursues and merges with the film images of the three women he adores. Using the life story of a real benshi, a Japanese-born artist who went under the name of Musei, Sakamoto fluently slid in and out of Japanese, French, and American female characters, transitioning back into Musei between them. Sakamoto had to create a shadowy self who came to life when merging with the fleeting images of matinee idols, shedding and assuming identities like skins. It was a solo performance marked by pain, ecstasy, more than a slight sense of the absurd, and above all, a devouring emptiness.