Pacific Standard Time: Kalpa @ The J. Paul Getty Museum

Kalpa was the name of an incredible performance at the J. Paul Getty Museum choreographed by the artist Hirokazu Kosaka. It was a cold night and even though we were all freezing, we braved the weather to watch the performers enact what could only be described as a majestic 30 minute performance of enchantment. And who were we to complain about the weather anyways, when the dancers weren’t even wearing shoes or socks on the marble floor. We all lined up to the front of the stairs for the performance to begin, but it actually took us by surprise when it started in the center of the crowd and continued to spread out as more and more characters joined the plot. So that the audience was constantly on the move following the floodlights that pointed to the action. And what I took from the story of the dance personally was that it was about a warrior who goes into battle and unfortunately is slain at the end of it, which was beautifully enacted by Oguri –  a butoh master who tilted his back as if it had been nearly severed off and walked up the stairs to what I can only presume was meant to be Heaven. But before he does so however, the other warriors who he has fought through the night walked down from the top of stairs with hundreds of strings across their mouths, which eventually formed a sea of thread over our heads. There was also a soundscape that accompanied the performance, which included the sounds of nature and deep tumbling pads that enhanced the emotion of the dancers instead of distract away from them. And if you closed your eyes you could’ve easily come up with a similar story to what the dancers were actually portraying with their motions because of how well orchestrated the score actually was. I know that this performance has been done before, but to see it on Friday night, was truly once in a lifetime, since it will never be performed the same way again. Kalpa is proof that performance art can be beautiful and entertaining at the same time and it was one of the most spectacular things I’ve ever seen happen at the Getty since it opened in 1997. I’ll be going to more Pacific Standard Time performance events this week, but I believe the bar has already been set unmatchably high.

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THE J. PAUL GETTY MUSEUM: http://www.getty.edu/

FOR YOUR ART: http://foryourart.com/

PACIFIC STANDARD TIME: http://www.pacificstandardtime.org/

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