the chrysanthemum and the rose

To celebrate Japan Year in Britain, Chris was commissioned to write the scenario/script for the Anglo-Japanese masked dance drama AMATERASU (THE SUN GODESS): The Resurrection of Radiance, performed at the Theatre Royal Dury Lane in May 2001. In collaboration with Super Kabuki/Issey Miyake fashion designer/director Tomio Mohri, choreographer Cathy Marston and the City Ballet of London, the play was an adaptation of the ancient Japanese epic depicting the mystical roots of the nation and the genesis of dance – a story of divine wrath, retribution and redemption.

Written in blank verse with a British caste of Shakespearean actors, the famed Japanese taiko drummer Miyuki Ikeda, super-model Sayako Yamaguchi, and music by ex-Sadistic Mica Band founder Kazuhiko Kato, the play employed techniques from the traditional stage of Kabuki together with innovative choreography from contemporary dance—a unique production illuminating the melding of culture and assorted media.

Performances: May 23-27, The Theatre Royal Drury Lane, London.

the indian odyssey

Invited by the Institute of Tagore Studies and Research at Nisva-Bharati, Santiniketan, West Bengal, for an extended stay as a "visiting fellow," Chris, here in India’s Abode of Peace, (where the Nobel Prize Winning Poet Rabindranath Tagore lived and set up his unique and experimental school of learning), gave performances of his work and wrote a new series of lyrical pieces. Based on the 108 appellations of Krishna, and the tripartite mystical utterance of the Upanisads, the completed composition is essentially a ceremonial chant-like litany or sutra.

Entitled Thirty-Three Billion Songs on the Road of Reincarnations (after the number of deities in the Hindu pantheon), this volume, a vast rhythmical mosaic of observations/experiences, is the antithesis of Chris’s customary frenetic approach. Rather it is a becalming product of the country of its origin.

"At times depicting the overpowering beauty of an exotic environment and at times detailing the harsh realities beneath these aesthetics, the sutra can be read as a rhythmical litany, as a neo-religious prayer, but ultimately as an explosive edition of sensual shrapnel."

the third hand

Produced by fashion designer Tomio Mohri, SEBIRO, an exhibition of the contemporary "47 Ronins," opened at the Spiral Garden Gallery, Omotesando, Toyko, Oct 2002. On display were the outfits of forty-seven of Japan’s latest loyal retainers, from architects to actors, dancers to directors. Chris’s favourite "flipper fashion" was included – his sealskin jacket, that supposedly can balance a ball on its shoulder!

Note the additional hand that Chris resorts to under dire lyrical deadlines.