In a hot black-box rehearsal room in Tokyo Master Suzuki, a Japanese calligrapher, is covering a woman’s body with the delicate kanji characters of the Buddhist Diamond Sutra. On a screen at the back of the room a giant ink blob pulses and mutates as a dancer follows its movements, while a couple lock arms to explode and punch through squares in a precisely timed routine. Outside is Shibuya, the neon-lit district in which Bill Murray attempted karaoke in Lost in Translation, its streets filling with teenagers in the humid July night.
The show being pieced together is TeZukA, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui’s homage to the work of Osamu Tezuka. Cherkaoui is the half-Flemish, half-Moroccan choreographer best known for three spectacular collaborations with Antony