"Kaidan Insuto' by Daniele Strawmyre's readySetGo

The presentation of new and experimental dance and theater in Philadelphia isn’t confined to the September weeks of the Live Arts and Fringe Festival but continues throughout the year beneath the radar screen of most audiences and the media. Often the venues— in low-budget outlying neighborhoods— are not the recognizable names that draw large audiences.

Two venues in Lower Kensington that are well worth a visit have emerged to present provocative and quality work from a younger generation of movement and allied artists: thefidget space, is a collaboration of the choreographer/dancer Megan Bridge and Peter Price, a sound/video, multi-media artist; and around the corner is the Mascher Space Co-op, a collective of about a dozen performing artists. The former recently presented Kaidan Insuto, an engrossing performance installation work by Daniele Strawmyre and her readySetGo dance company.

Kaidan has its roots in ghost tales of Japan’s 17th-Century Edo period (as well as their more contemporary manifestation in Japanese horror films). Choosing five archetypal characters (whose identities and cultural setting could have been aided by program notes), Strawmyre skillfully subdivided the fidget loft space with curtains and flooded them, as well as the walls of the space, with video projections, some live and interactive with the audience and performers.

Abandoned warehouse

Throughout the performance’s sections, as the audience moved from space to space during a midnight showing, I constantly checked out the surroundings for visual images to gauge the ever-changing array of live and virtual characters in this artfully constructed haunted house— in fact, an abandoned and partly inhabited multi-story warehouse off Cecil B. Moore Avenue.

The ghost tales, which included English and Japanese text, proved most memorable when the costume and scenic elements were at their most expressive. In one darkened scene, a large, menacing head suddenly sprang from its body into the space, instantly creating an even more menacing serpent.

In another, the dancer David Konyk became a moving umbrella, enveloped in a conical umbrella-like costume while he slushed toward a wall where diagonal, painterly strokes of dark, falling rain fell across a wall through which he exited. Later, the shadow of a dancing body fell across a massive lunar image, suggesting other worldly travels of these ghosts.

Audience involvement (not)

Occasionally the text came through, revealing that a dead woman’s screams continued to haunt her murderer. The dancers, in white clad costumes and with the red eye paint of a Butoh dancer, generally maintained the ethereal spookiness of the piece. But they were at their best when they worked close to the floor and with speed to accentuate their immateriality.

Attempts to inject interaction between the audience and the performers were less successful. Dancers passing near and around audience members failed to engage their designated victims. The blindfolding of a few audience members, who were then touched or minimally moved by dancers, lacked sufficient inventiveness and left the remaining audience, for the most part, disengaged and not particularly curious or empathetic.

I missed the original presentation of this work in the recent Live Arts Festival. But the Festival now serves as an important incubator and catalyst of new work, allowing the ghostly reincarnation of a Kaidan Insuto, and in a setting that’s likely more haunting than its original.