Noh Such Thing as Time

Noh performance of "Yashima daiji" at Dia Center for the Arts

Hiroshi Sugimoto and Naohiko Umewaka

$45 general admission; $40 members, students, and seniors. Tickets for the remaining performance on Saturday evening, October 6, may be purchased in person at the admission desk at 548 West 22nd Street during museum hours, 12-6 pm. Please note: there will be no late admission. Tickets must be picked up by 7:45pm.

Dia Center for the Arts is pleased to present "Noh Such Thing as Time," a project devised by Hiroshi Sugimoto with Naohiko Umewaka. "Yashima" the Noh masterpiece, will be performed by Dr. Naohiko Umewaka, one of Japan's foremost Noh actors and his Noh theater troupe on four evenings, October 3-6, 2001. Hiroshi Sugimoto will design and create the lighting, staging and set for this production.

Originally an art for the Shogun and Samurai, Noh has a tradition that, in spanning more than six hundred years, offers a compelling dramaturgical meditation on fantasy and reality, past and present. Zeani (1363-1444), the classic master of Noh theater, whose texts often rose to the level of great poetry, offered two very different versions of "Yashima," one "conventional," the other -- daiji-- "important." The exceptional artistry of the latter makes it amongst the most esoteric of Noh plays.

For "Noh Such Thing as Time", the back screen -- kagami-ita -- integral to the Noh stage, will be replaced by two large multi-paneled photographic works, titled "Pine Landscape." A third work, a seascape, photographed at the actual site where the battle of "Yashima" was fought in 1185, will also be shown. This set, together with Sugimoto's wooden stage, will be lit solely by classic Japanese candles -- warousoku -- in monumental candelabras, evoking the forms of traditional productions.

Naohiko Umewaka, leader of the Umewaka Noh theater troupe, is the son of the late Naoyoshi Umewaka, who is considered a legendary Noh actor. Naohiko Umewaka trained with his father, starting to act at the age of three and playing his first main role in Tauchigumo at the age of nine. He received a doctorate in drama from the University of London in 1995 where he now teaches as a visiting professor. He also is an associate professor in arts management at Shizuoka University of Art and Culture. Naohiko Umewaka has composed, choreographed, and directed a number of new Noh plays including The Baptism of Jesus, which was performed before Pope John Paul II in the Vatican Palace on Christmas Eve 1988. His 1998 production, Lear, was included in international theater festivals in Hong Kong, Singapore, Jakarta, Perth, Berlin and Copenhagen. In addition to his numerous roles in productions staged by the Umewaka theater troupe worldwide, Naohiko Umewaka appeared as Emperor Hirohito in the 1995 film Hiroshima.

Since the late 1970s, Hiroshi Sugimoto has focused in depth on a few select subjects, devoting decades to each investigation. Sugimoto's series of photographs, Theatres; Dioramas and Wax Museums; Seascapes; Sanjusangendo, Hall of Thirty-Three Bays; and Architecture, evoke the tensions of nostalgia, mythmaking, and the imprecision of capturing a moment in time. Born in Tokyo in 1948, he received degrees from St. Paul's University in Tokyo and from Art Center College of Design in California. His work has been shown internationally and recent solo exhibitions include Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin (2000); Center for Contemporary Art, Kitakysuhu, Japan (1998); Art Gallery of York University, Ontario, Canada (1998); the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (1995-1996); and Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (1993). He currently has an exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum Soho.

Support for this performance has been provided by The Japan Foundation; Carla Emil and Richard Silverstein; and Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco. Additional support has been received from Hiromi Yoshii, Gallery Koyanagi, Sonnabend Gallery, and Toraya.