The dance review, ” ‘Zero One’ Plays With Difference at Danspace” by Siobhan Burke focuses on how the dance piece revolves around the concept of two’s. Burke mentions how the performance essentially draws from the very different backgrounds of the two dancers. One being trained in Japanese Butoh, and the other in European contemporary dance, Burke states that “Ms. Yokoshi…seems interested in both reconciling and teasing out differences, finding the two-ness in their oneness, and vice versa.” I personally found it most interesting how the choreographer, Yasuko Yokoshi, chose the identical Fukuoka twins to be the two performers in the dance. Having two visually indistinguishable dancers makes the concept of two’s and the differences among the two dance styles all the more ironic.

Furthermore, I was able to make note of how Burke utilized some of the critiquing techniques mentioned in Wendy Oliver’s “Writing About Dance”. Oliver emphasizes how the goal of a dance critic should be to write as vividly as possible in order to try to “re-create some aspects of the performance for the reader”. It is evident that Burke attempts to evoke the performance in the reader’s mind when she says “one dancer, stiffened, collapses in the other’s arms, her bones knocking against the wooden floor”. Aside from the duality exhibited in this piece, Burke makes note of the haunting film excerpts displayed in the background of the dance. The excerpts are from Ms. Yokoshi’s film “Hangman Takuzo” and they exhibit an old “Japanese performance artist who hangs himself — safely — each day in his garden”. It is noticeable that the film being played in the background influenced Burke’s description of the performance when she says ” their movement, much like the dangling Hangman Tazuko and the ghostly Ms. Kawamura in the film, hovers delicately between being here and being gone”. Although Burke does a great job of describing the piece, I feel that her critique was incomplete. I learned from Oliver that criticism includes “description, analysis, interpretation, and evaluation, which are equally applicable to observing and writing about dance”. After reading the review I felt that her critique lacked thorough analysis and interpretation. I felt like I didn’t get a sense of what she exactly thought of the dance piece or what she might’ve thought it represented or meant.

 

Ariella Caminero