Powell Street Festival
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
August 3-4, 2002

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Curious onlookers watch the spectacle unfolding before their eyes: Jay Hirabayashi of KOKORO Dance performs a site-specific Post-Butoh dance. JH wears a white button down shirt and black pants, with Butoh white body paint on his head and limbs. With a slow and purposeful movement - and a thundering ethereal soundscape surrounding the center of the park - he moves slowly through the numerous people sprawled out on the grass. The people he moves through are of all ethnicities (Asian, Native, white) and from all economic backgrounds and lifestyles. JH's style is his own. The basis is Butoh, with many forms of dance infused. JH's face contorts from idyllic bliss, to confusion, to fear, and wonderment of simple pleasures.

The dance roves around and throughout the park…then, at the mid-point of his wonderful dance: THE ONSLAUGHT OF THE RED GIANT and her three accomplices! I was thoroughly enjoying this fantastic dance, when all of a sudden this Large Boned Woman in Red Velvet slammed into me and shoved me aside and did the "home-run" slide! So during the rest of the dance piece, this photo parasite BECAME the dance and JH used her extreme tactics, and she thought he was doing a private dance. I tried to stay low-key and stay in one spot, but SHE and her posse were UNSTOPPABLE! I ended up videotaping the rest of the performance-pretty funny.

In some of the video shots you can see a wheelchair in the background. She was wheeling her "assistant" in the wheelchair and wheeling her own gear in a baby stroller. When the action came near her, the "assistant" would leap out of the chair, grabbing a good spot to shoot from. She would hurl her camera bag to him and he'd pull out her other camera. It was truly a weird scene. Maybe you will see the indie video version of this sometime?

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