Strong ‘River’ Flows Slowly Along a Restless Course

Two nude figures painstakingly inch their way across a watery floor in a near-dark Japan America Theatre. Are they primordial creatures? Are they human? Are we witnessing a process of evolution at a pace that rebukes our up-tempo, MTV sense of time?

These are the kinds of questions that arose when the husband-and-wife team of Eiko and Koma Otake began performing the West Coast premiere of their compelling “River” on Friday, under the joint sponsorship of the theater and UCLA.

Other questions followed when seemingly an eon later, though probably only 10 or 15 minutes, their movements took on other significance as the Kronos Quartet, seated upstage behind them, started playing a commissioned score by Japanese composer Somei Satoh.

“River,” third in a series of pieces focusing upon interaction with elements of nature (after “Wind,” 1993, and “Land,” 1991), began in 1995 as an outdoor environmental work. This proscenium version, approximately 75 minutes long, with no intermission, retains driftwood sculpture by Judd Weisberg. The score is new. The dim, dramatic and moody lighting was by Jeff Fontaine.

In a sense, very little “happened,” and what happened always took place at that glacial tempo. After crossing the pond, the figures, now partially clothed, reappeared separately. They stood, withered, collapsed. They crawled, they reached out to each other, they connected. But always their embrace, never a fulfilling one, unraveled.

They found little rest. Their bodies twisted or contorted, consistently expressing great tension. On his own, the man could not save himself, but he seemed to have tasks--to save the woman from drowning and also to upright a structure made of driftwood. In the case of erecting the structure, he succeeded only temporarily.

The force that propelled the two--if such a word can be used for such slow pacing--may have operated blindly. It may have worked through the two without their consent. But it was indomitable. It never halted for long. The piece ended with images recalling the beginning. Another cycle was about to ensue.

Such a vision can be pitiless and grim. One may regard it with stoic heroism, detachment or nihilism.

But intermittently sanctifying the struggle was Satoh’s evocative and luminous score, played sensitively by the Kronos musicians--violinists David Harrington and John Sherba, violist Hank Dutt and cellist Joan Jeanrenaud.

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Satoh didn’t write cheap or sentimental music. Nor did his score provide a resolution to the existential issues raised by Eiko and Koma. At times, the music lit the dancers with the beneficent purity of the newly called Holy Minimalism. At times, it receded into the distance--cool, thin, abstract, barely breathed. At times, it participated in the argument, dissonant and conflicted. Always it sounded arresting.

The Kronos, which appears to be able to distinguish any number of degrees of dynamic between piano and pianissimo and for which intonation and ensemble never seem to be problems, plans to record a tape for future performances of “River.”

One hopes that such performances will solve a problem encountered at the Japan America. With much of the movement confined to the floor level and lit so dimly, it was difficult to see clearly what was happening, especially during the opening section. Indeed, several people in the front rows moved to the sides of the hall, where they stood to watch. Theirs was an understandable decision.