'Silvering Path' a memorable collision of dance, music, film and art

Performance Review |

Dance, music, film, props and wearable sculpture all collide in "The Silvering Path."

And I do mean collide.

Kitchen utensils do battle with ninja weaponry. Cabbages are assaulted by hungry slugs — or, rather, slug royalty.

The resulting three-part multimedia show — dreamed up by dancer Haruko Nishimura of the Degenerate Art Ensemble — was as entrancing as it was surreal. Even if the pleasurable opening act only loosely connected with Acts Two and Three, "Path" still added up to a memorable evening.

"Program 1: Mother Mothra's Visit" highlighted Nishimura's comic and athletic talents. Playing a "nymph" in a stunning red gown with headdress (think "futuristic Victorian"), Nishimura sat behind a pot-and-pan-festooned kitchen counter and fiddled with a static-plagued radio, trying to find a tune she liked.

Eventually, she came up with a tune of her own. And as she sang, a door on a large video screen opened up and an outlandish figure identified as "Mother Mothra" (again, Nishimura) appeared, interacting with the live actress. This "duet" was intricate, polished and spiced with sound effects that shattered the divide between filmed and fleshly reality. The one weak link was Nishimura's voice, which wasn't loud enough against Jeffrey Huston and Joshua Kohl's electro-minimalist backdrop for all the lyrics to be intelligible.

Even better was to come, as Huston and Kohl took on "ninja" duties, wielding bokkens (wooden swords) against the kitchen pans and then against the "nymph" herself — who emerged from behind the counter in a hoop skirt to beat all hoop skirts. This was a "weeble wobble dress" designed by Colin Ernst, with a circular steel-frame "hem" that let Nishimura spin and gyrate without tipping over. Fitted out with chimes, it became part of the musical score as the ninjas and then the whirling nymph herself struck at it.

"Program 2: The Silvering Path" was a film by Ian Lucero about the growing and harvesting of, yes, cabbages. Nishimura, Ree Anne Halonen and Mandy Greer were the stars. But it was the fiber-art creations they wore (by Greer) that stole the show. The subject of this dreamy pastorale might be agricultural, but the artifice was pushed to fanciful heights. Between Greer's costumes and Lucero's cinematography, the borderline between fiber and vegetable matter grew blurry. Some humor entered the picture when Nishimura's beaded and bedizened "Slug Princess" found a cabbage she liked.

With "Program 3: The Slug Princess" the evening returned to live action: a solo dance by Nishimura, clad in her "Slug Princess" finery from the film. At first her moves were all low undulation: a Butoh-and-beyond style of dance. Then, to an intensifying live score provided by Huston and Kohl, her dance built to something more primal.

Nishimura, originally from Japan and now based in Seattle, is a magnetic performer, tapping into feelings and instincts that may not make surface sense but that handily access the realms of the unconscious. Her dream visions are reinforced, rather than diminished, by her highly mannered approaches to her subject matter. This is risk-taking work.

Michael Upchurch: mupchurch@seattletimes.com