Sankai Juku’s Elegant Trip Through Space Gets Stalled

The program notes for “Yuragi (In a Space of Perpetual Motion),” the latest Sankai Juku work to premiere in Los Angeles, mention more than once the idea that butoh is somehow “universal.”

Now, the universality claim is common for partisans of many dance forms. But in fact, butoh--a Japanese-born strain of modern dance--is a very particular style. There is, for instance, always an attitude toward time--mainly slowing down all movement--and there are the shaved heads and chalky body makeup, the anguished postures and the careful weight given each gesture.

But there are various ways to deploy said style. The five-man troupe Sankai Juku, led by Ushio Amagatsu, is known for its austere elegance, much in evidence Friday night at the Wiltern Theatre. In seven scenes that took 90 minutes, the images suggested by “Yuragi” (1993) could have been those of intergalactic monks performing secret ceremonies.

Their meeting place was a sort of moonscape, a patch of dusty sepia ground in a sea of black. Thirteen clear plastic disks hovered close to the surface, throwing watery reflections when jostled. Amagatsu once carefully staggered between the disks, but more often, they were raised to provide a central space for the other four dancers to perform enigmatic rites in their draped robes.

They bobbed up and down smoothly like genuflecting jellyfish, sank to their knees humbly or were suddenly seized by fear, their bodies curved rigidly, their mouths frozen in perfect O’s. To each side, another kind of vulnerability was more disturbing--two rabbits were harnessed decoratively in bowls balanced on two wobbly 20-foot steel poles. Stirring and peering down when bathed in ecru light, they seemed sacrificed to the god of design.

The taped soundscape by Yas-Kaz and Yoichiro Yoshikawa often built to a “wall of sound,” with fuzzy drawn-out chords, flutes that mimicked mistral winds, and the echoing bings and bongs so associated with space music.

Yet, in the end, this “space of perpetual motion” seemed stalled. One image never invited the next, in the way butoh so often works, with its own inchoate logic. Instead, each scene had a rather sluggish prettiness to it, the kind that does not leave a lasting impression.