Ryuichi Fujimura’s works have a strong storytelling focus. In each section of HERE NOW – performed as a trilogy for the first time as part of this year’s OzAsia lineup – the Sydney-based dancer and choreographer speaks directly to the audience. Together, the works form a compelling narrative arc encompassing reflections on the beginning and future of his career, as well as frustrations and anxieties along the way. They also share a playful referentiality and ever-present wry humour. Above all, they are suffused with the artist’s earnest love for his art.
HERE NOW opens with ‘How I Practice My Religion’. Dressed in a missionary suit, Fujimura tells the tale of taking his first dance lessons as an adult, before he strips down to a pink t shirt and a pair of shorts to rival Don Dunstan’s. He proceeds to execute a compelling case for the joy of movement, narrating as he goes the kinds of techniques one might be called upon to reproduce in a dance improv class: ‘pulsing’, ‘rotating’, and, with a toss of his head after catching his breath, ‘recovering’. With deadpan delivery he acknowledges the more abstract ambitions of modern dance: “Interacting with my environment,” he intones after a cautious tug at the stage curtains, and when he suddenly skips through the audience, he is “breaking down the fourth wall”. It’s a work that will resonate with anyone who has persisted through fears of looking foolish as a later-in-life beginner to find pleasure in a new artform or outlet.
Like David Byrne in ‘Once in a Lifetime’, for his second piece Fujimura asks himself, “How Did I Get Here?”. Standing on a stark stage under dim white lights, wearing a collared shirt and trousers, he wouldn’t look out of place in one of Byrne’s concert films. The underlying humour to his movements is also something he shares with Byrne, along with an ability to find the poignant in the absurd. The shortest of the three works and the least verbal, ‘How Did I Get Here?’ works well as a bridging interlude. Dancing to Sinatra with martini in hand, Fujimura has the air of a man at the end of a funeral reception: several drinks in, facing down the relentless march of time.
The concluding work, ‘Fall! Falter!! Dance!!!’, begins with a story of how Fujimura met Greta Gerwig at a modern dance class in New York, when she was conducting research for her 2012 film Frances Ha. In between recounting moments of disappointment in his career, Fujimura returns to Gerwig, lip-synching to interviews she gave about her interest in contemporary dance, and in particular about the time pressure dancers face to succeed while young (more like athletes in this regard than other artists). HERE NOW ends with a surge of defiant energy – Fujimura grooving to ‘You Can’t Always Get What You Want’ in a sequined bomber jacket – and the optimistic coda, “to be continued…”.
The trilogy is showing at Vitalstatistix, and its thematic concerns make it a fitting transition piece in the organisation’s program as it moves from its multiyear project, Bodies of Work, which explored art as labour, to its new direction, This Mortal Coil. A key focus of this new project will be to resist the industry’s preoccupation with youth by showcasing “artists of maturity”. Fujimura’s richness of experience and his perspective as an artist in the midst of his career translates to an energising, hopeful piece of dance theatre.
HERE NOW Trilogy is playing at Vitalstatistix at the Waterside Workers Hall until November 7 as part of OzAsia Festival