I just got back from a week of rehearsals and performances of an English Noh Play, "Crazy Jane". Along with the play, two short dance pieces were presented each night and I was given one piece to dance on Friday night. It has been five years since I participated in an intensive training of Noh, so naturally, I felt rusty and under-prepared, which I had expected. What I didn't expect was the revelations I had while I practiced the dance being in half-panic state.
The most potent moment visited me when I was rehearsing by myself in the studio a day before the performance. At that point, I had the sequence memorized and had a pretty good idea of how the song matched the dance. (In Noh dance, movements and singing are in a close relationship to each other. If you don't know the song well, you can't dance well.) I wanted to reach the place where I can actually feel and dance the dance.
As I worked on my dance in an empty quiet space, my body started remembering the power that resided in every aspect of noh. Because I was re-learning the form, so to speak, this time I was starting to understand more about the reasons for various details - why jo-ha-kyu, why small steps, what happens when you restrain, why arms move in certain sequences and why all these things are important to make the dance work. I also began to realize when all elements are executed, strong energy starts circulating through one's body and connecting with the energy of the universe. Through extreme minimalism, this energy becomes distilled to the purest primal state and gets transmitted to the audience. As I kept dancing, I began to feel this energy inside my body, moving it to the next step, and the next step. The air around me started shifting and I started being in contact with the invisibles. (perhaps this is the reason why contact between the performers is minimal in noh?)
This resonates with what I have been striving for in my own work - maximum evocation with minimal stimuli. The work transcends what a performer does or who he is (visibles) and rises into a large encompassing universe. But to achieve this, you need to perfect the form with precision. In a sense, it seems that the performer is 'borrowing' the form to reside in the spirit of the Noh character.
I renewed my appreciation for the depth of this traditional art form and was glad to be able to 'feel' the form through the body rather than 'understand' it through the head.