Aichi Triennale 2019
I attended Sakanaction’s “KURAYAMI,” one of the music programs of the Aichi Triennale 2019. The venue was the Large Hall (2nd floor) of the Aichi Prefectural Arts Theater.
KURAYAMI
I attended the daytime performance on August 10, 2019. Even before the show began, the hall was enveloped in an unusual atmosphere.
The program handed out at the entrance already contained a printed outline of the performance.
The defining feature of this show was a performance carried out with the entire hall plunged into total darkness. Several rules were imposed on the audience as well.
[ Structure ]
Practice
Tuning — rhythmic shiftAct One
Ame (C)Act Two
TransformationAct Three
ResonanceAct Four
O darkness, let us go
(No staging, complete blackout)*Quoted from the program distributed in advance
When I entered the hall, the lights had been lowered and a bell-like sound reminiscent of the New Year’s Eve bells was slowly and rhythmically ringing.
A buzzer sounded, and while announcements about the show were being made, the hall was covered in an unusual silence, with a tense atmosphere in which not a single word of private conversation seemed allowed. Perhaps the title “Darkness Live” itself carried the meaning of binding us, the audience, under a certain set of rules.
Looking around, a female staff member in what looked like a black robe was walking slowly with an incense burner. She seemed to be releasing a fragrance into the hall, offering a small measure of relaxation that slightly eased the tension (the identity of the scent was unknown).
What I had thought were bells turned out to be gongs.
As the hall lights gradually dimmed, the bell-like sound eventually transformed into the strong tones of struck gongs, and the five members slowly emerged from the wings of the stage.
At a typical live show, this would be the moment for loud cheers and applause, but the audience seemed even more tense than before, staring at the members as if holding their breath. Silence, it seemed, was one of the rules imposed on us.
Applause finally broke out when the five members took their positions and bowed toward the audience.
From this moment of applause until the very end of the show, we in the audience remained seated the entire time, and not a single person spoke a word.
The show began with “Practice — Tuning, Rhythmic Shift.”
In this section, we were plunged into five minutes of total darkness.
To put my conclusion first, those five minutes were the most stimulating experience of the entire performance.
The darkness — unchanged whether my eyes were open or closed — was so deep, so black, that it seemed to paint the very air itself black; like a condemned prisoner awaiting execution, I felt bound to my chair with no escape.
The fear that overtook me as I was drawn into the darkness, combined with the inescapable urgency of it, seemed to push my mind into a complex state approaching panic.
Beyond the pitch-black state directly before my eyes, I was also aware of the roughly 2,500 audience members simultaneously experiencing the same thing while seated — perhaps that awareness made it feel almost like a religious ritual. This heightened state continued until the five minutes had passed.
From Act One onward, the staging revolved around darkness, unfolding through sound and light. Video was projected onto circular and vertical screens on stage, creating a contrast between darkness and the visuals of light and imagery. The recurring image of sparklers emerging from the darkness was particularly striking and remains vividly etched in my memory.
Before I knew it, we had reached the final section.
In the closing act, bright lighting was suddenly flooded across the stage before shifting back into darkness.
By this later stage, my eyes had grown accustomed to the darkness, so the impact was no longer as strong as at the beginning; I found myself focused solely on the audio staging.
For sound, the production employed the Soundscape System by the German speaker-system brand d&b audiotechnik, its first introduction in Japan. Billed as a cutting-edge audio system that goes beyond conventional stereo L/R setups, my impression was that it fell short of reaching the level of a fully equipped, cinema-grade sound system.
The performance was relatively short, running about 60 minutes.
It concluded with a cinematic staging in which the lights gradually dimmed as the five members walked toward the back of the stage and disappeared. The back of the Aichi Prefectural Arts Theater’s Large Hall was completely empty — none of the miscellaneous equipment usually seen there — just an expanse of open space.
Watching the members’ backs slowly recede, we in the audience simply gazed at the hall being enveloped in darkness, surrendering ourselves to the final darkness as it came.
Overview
Sakanaction
“KURAYAMI”
Venue: Aichi Prefectural Arts Theater, Large Hall
Performance dates: August 7 (Wed), 8 (Thu), 10 (Sat), 11 (Sun)
Times: Daytime — doors open 14:30, show starts 15:00; Evening — doors open 18:30, show starts 19:00
*August 7 (Wed) is evening performance only
Tickets: S Seat 5,800 yen / A Seat 4,800 yen / B Seat 3,800 yen
