Performing Salome in the Pacific. Three works by Yuki Kihara

Keywords: colonial representations, decolonial processes, environmental crisis, ethnographic photography, reenactment

Abstract

The essay explores three works by the Japanese-Sāmoan interdisciplinary artist, researcher, and curator Yuki Kihara. More specifically it delves into Kihara’s reenactment of the taualuga, a traditional Sāmoan dance, as well of the mythological figure Salome, who wielded dance as a tool for political manipulation and became Kihara’s evolving alter-ego since 2002. Kihara’s performances and videos, particularly Siva in Motion and Galu Afi, address themes of mourning over colonialism’s impact on Pacific peoples, in the wake of the environmental crisis. Drawing on influences from ethnographic photography and Western theatrical traditions, Kihara’s works offer a critical perspective on identity and power dynamics, highlight the fluidity of gender and cultural identity, and invite audiences to reframe historical narratives and challenge colonial representations. Her performances also contribute to the most recent critique of the long-standing canonical approach to dance modernism as limited geographically to Western culture and to rethink it rather as a transtemporal and trans-local phenomenon. Lastly, Kihara’s engagement with the Sāmoan concept of vā—meaning the collapsing of time and space—contribute to the decolonisation of museums by engaging with alternative forms of historical representation and creating a conceptual space where historical pasts, community memory, and embodied knowledge coexist and interact.

 

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Author Biography

Susanne Franco, Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia

Susanne Franco is Associate Professor in Dance, Theatre and Performance Studies at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, and the Rector’s Delegate for the Performing Arts. She was the PI of the international research project “Memory in Motion: Re-Membering Dance History (2019–2023, SPIN2) and the coordinator of the Ca’ Foscari Unit for the international research project “Dancing Museums: The Democracy of Beings (2018–2021, Creative Europe). She has published numerous essays on modern and contemporary dance and research methodology. As a curator she has collaborated with numerous Italian Institutions and Museums, and currently (with Annalisa Sacchi) she directs the theatre Festival “Asteroide Amor”. She recently edited (with Cristina Baldacci) On Reenactment: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools (2022), (with Gabriella Giannachi) Moving Spaces: Enacting Dance, Performance, and the Digital in the Museum(2021), and (with Marina Nordera) The Oxford Handbook of Dance and Memory (forthcoming).

Published
2024-06-30
How to Cite
Franco, S. (2024). Performing Salome in the Pacific. Three works by Yuki Kihara. Mimesis Journal, 13(1), 55-73. https://doi.org/10.13135/2389-6086/10452
Section
Performing Memory Through Dance. Anthropological Perspectives