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| Otaku Strikes! "Mars:
Conquest of the Galaxy II"
By Leigh Witchel Okay, you know what anime is; you may also know manga. Now what’s otaku? Otaku is a Japanese word describing someone obsessed, usually with an aspect of Japanese pop culture like video games or anime. Japan Society has brought us an entire festival, “Cool Japan: Otaku Strikes!” with the all-male troupe Condors as one of the dance offerings. The Japan Society has the cool, tranquil atmosphere of a Japanese pavilion in its public lobbies with reflecting pools and gently curved wooden benches, but the theater is strictly utilitarian and western. In the same way, if you’re expecting any echoes of traditional Japanese culture at this performance, abandon them as you enter the theater. This is exuberantly pop. “Mars: Conquest of the Galaxy II” is less of a dance and more of a series of skits; a Japanese “Kids in the Hall” complete with jumpy film shorts projected on the back screen and boys in hideous drag. One skit was a helpful introduction to the Japanese culture of today, with the Kabuki performer and the Geisha being replaced by the Japanese salaryman and high-school girl who conduct a transaction via text message involving the sale of her panties. In the midst of this, the otaku boy wanders in obliviously, carrying his anime figures. Much of it is crassly funny but some cultural references that were hilarious to the Japanese in the audience get lost in translation. The dance portions of the evening are athletic and macho, leaps and kicks inspired by martial arts. Occasionally there’s a unison dance right out of a music video—in fact the one I recall most vividly was from one of the films projected on the back screen. The music is mostly ‘60s and ‘70s Glam Rock played at eardrum-busting levels; some of it brings back nostalgic memories, others nostalgic horror. Queen, for instance: Condors danced their finale to “Fat Bottomed Girls”, a song that doesn’t qualify as “so bad it’s good” and instead brings back shrieking memories of feathered hair and Qiana shirts. Condors believes in Glam; they treated “Fat Bottom Girls” as if it were a genuine anthem. There are western choreographers looking at the same era; see Stanley Love’s work if you’d like to see an American take on the same kitsch with a similar sketch format. But Japanese pop is fascinating to the West because it’s our pop transplanted and handed back to us recognizable but completely transformed. Volume 3,
No. 9 |
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