ABSTRACT

Dressed in a floor-length white dress, framed against a hovering mirrored square, Tadashi Endo moves backwards unfurling both arms into the air. He watches the passage of his hands overhead like small winged creatures, one fluttering up then returning, followed by the other. These hands, seemingly filled with a life of their own, are what draws his movement out. But they also draw, in this gesture of upwards escape, the memory of Pina Bausch’s iconic opening scene in Café Muller (1978). 1