Once the Festival was up and running, the stress started to fall away and I breathed a huge sigh of relief that we seemed to have risen to the challenge of following last year’s one. I have to admit that I was worried how we could ever compete with the amazing Japanese dominated line-up of 2011. Of course, we had Mr Kazami representing Japan again and I think this time he felt a little more free to really go for it in his shows and show a few of the things that earned him the title of the ‘Atrocious Nawashi’. His first show featured a breast tie based suspension and his second ended with a choke out, not exactly first date material but I think a lot of people were curious to see the more sadistic side to him. So far, we had only seen his softer shows and found him a delightful, lovable teddy bear of a man that belies his demonstrably appropriate nickname…and those of us who have seen the videos on scrum-web.jp will know he was being Mr Nice Guy in the shows! All kudos to the beautiful Gestalta who stood in as his model again. She took these two shows like a trooper even after she had spent most of the preceding 4 days being tied almost non-stop during his master classes.
One of the things that seemed to surprise everyone is how varied the shows were, even though a lot featured very similar fundamental ties, e.g. OS/Kinoko t-k, futo momo etc. The very international flavour probably contributed to this: Russia, Taiwan, America, Australia and all over Europe. Of course, kinbaku is about communication, which is a very personal business, so the differences were a sign that performers were putting their personalities into the shows.
We also saw a lot of performers have grown in the past year. Some years ago, I asked somewhat facetiously whether the west might ever produce better nawashi than Japan. It seemed absurd at the time but now I think some westerners are easily at the stage where they would be applauded genuinely by Japanese audiences. OK, we might not be about to produce the next Akechi Denki just yet but my question seems a little less ridiculous these days.
We had sensual shows where all you could hear was the rope, breathing and the occassional squeak or moan; there was comedy and farce, raw enjoyment and fun, classicism, re-birth, fast hard action and music from themes and film scores, classical, heavy metal, rock, ambient or absolute silence.
Here are a couple of new pictures of our show. You can see a lot more on the Facebook group.
