I went to the Coronet in Notting Hill to see the leading Japanese contemporary dance company perform Naraku (2020). This translates as The Abyss. The choreographer is Yoshimitsu Kushida. A sort of Japanese Pina Bausch. In other words, radical, in-your-face, no-holds-barred cutting-edge dance. The product does exactly what it says on the tin, to quote a famous advert. This show is not for the faint-hearted or the easily offended. It’s erotic, violent and disturbing. So please don’t go if you get easily triggered by those emotions. However, if you are up for it, then this is a spectacularly stunning and stimulating piece of Japanese dance macabre.
Framed as a nightmare, Naraku is one man’s journey into the unconscious. However, once opened, this can of worms turns into the stuff of nightmares. It’s a strange Japanese-style case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde-like device that allows the choreographer and lead dancer Yoshimitsu Kushida to act out his inner demons. It has to be said that they mainly involve grotesque acts of violence against women. Women are dragged around the stage like rag dolls, pulled limb from limb, chased and beaten, sexually violated, carried off like trophies of war, murdered and everything in between. It’s hard to think of a more misogynistic repertoire of abuse and violation. The performance is a series of episodic phases of play in which the performers make up different combinations now a two hander, now a three hander now all seven dancers. But the unifying theme is violence. Yes, some of the women fight back and get away, but that is the exception to the rule. If not murdered, they are left as a nervous wreck, shaking uncontrollably like an epileptic. There is a male-on-male sequence that reminded me of the naked wrestling in Women in Love (1969) between Oliver Reed and Alan Bates. The log fire, perhaps referencing the fires of hell? But even here, the confrontation descends into homoerotic bonding rather than overt rivalry. If proof were needed that toxic masculinity was a global problem, then Naraku throws petrol on the flames. All in all, it’s not a positive evening for Japanese women. If the show aims to criticise male violence, then clearly, it’s important. But I feel that the dream device just provides a fig leaf for the company to express very problematic male fantasies out loud, as it were. Audiences will make up their own mind.
Topless the Dance struck me as an alternative title for Naraku. That occurred to me as I thought about the freedom with which the male dancers performed naked from the waist up. Whereas the female dancers did not have that licence. They performed in tight tops that mimicked skin pigmentation. So even in the avant-garde world of modern experimental dance, traditional taboos still hold sway. Women just don’t have the same freedoms that male performers take for granted. And it matters because hereabouts the male members of the troupe take off their tops as a gesture of defiance and self-assertion. Like footballers celebrating a goal. Yes, Chloe Kelly did also, but she had a sports bra underneath. Being topless gives them a power and an edge that underscores the toxic masculinity that is central to Naraku. Male skin sweats and shimmers under the lights in Dance Company Lasta’s disturbingly relentless choreography of male desire, danger and destruction. We can almost smell the sweat and the testosterone swirling about on stage. In contrast, the confinement and lack of agency are indexed in the very garments that the women wear. Modern dance likes to think of itself as out there and at the cutting edge, but until women have the wherewithal to take off their tops and perform as they desire, then we are still confined and limited in a male paradigm.
The Naraku stage set and Motoi Matsuda’s soundscape create a very convincing bottomless pit of hell. The pitch-black stage and eerie atmospheric pings and crashes go a long way to make this a viscerally immersive experience. Think the London Dungeon and a ghost train at the funfair.
Review by John O’Brien
From Yoshimitsu Kushida and Dance Company Lasta, one of the foremost influences in contemporary Japanese dance for over a decade, Naraku is a visceral journey into a man’s psyche, where desire, ego, and obsession clash with electrifying intensity.
Internationally acclaimed choreographer and dancer Yoshimitsu Kushida plunges the audience into a surreal dreamscape where reality and fantasy intertwine.
A man sits alone, haunted by a mysterious presence. What begins as attraction soon becomes an intoxicating force that draws out his possessiveness, jealousy, and need for control. As his dream self battles his real self, his fantasies intensify until he reaches the edge of the abyss. Strange and compelling figures appear, tempting, guiding, and ultimately pulling him back from the void.
Artistic Director: Yoshimitsu Kushida
Dancers: Satoshi Nakagawa, Miwa Motojima, Yumika Yasuoka, Mana Tazaki, Riku Ogawa, Aoi Okamoto
Composer: Motoi Matsuda
Costume Design: hitoha.nasu, Grelot Arbre Co.,Ltd.
London Lighting Design: Yoshimitsu Koshida and Ros Chase
Production Manager: Kumiko Yamamoto
Understudy: Azuri Kawamura
NARAKU (ABYSS)
The Coronet Theatre
18 to 20 September 2025
