TAO DRUMMERS: THE THUNDER INSIDE

The stage is dark. The theatre is silent. Then the the sound of a small cymbal, very soft, silibant, rippling out over us. A drum now, a small drum, now struck, the stick rolled over it and the sound comes out like thunder from a distance, dissipating into the ripples created by the cymbal. Above the stage a light appears, circular and red. But it is not just a light, it is a massive Japanese taiko drum, lit from within by a red light. A woman walks to the drum, her body in silhouette, wearing a sheath dress, a long pony tail hanging down .. the music below her picks up tempo and her body moves to it, swaying, lithe, in her hands two short clubs that she twirls in time to the music. The cymbal clashes and her body turns, her arms raise and she makes the big drum sing...

This is Tao, a progressive Japanese drum troupe that performed in Toronto this past Friday night. Tao takes the tenets of traditional Japanese taiko drumming and pumps it up, mixing in influences from Maori and European drum line music as well as martial arts, dance and slapstick physical humour. The troupe we saw was made up of about 14 people including several women, who you do not usually see in traditional taiko

The drums were always the focal point of the show but there was much more than that. There were other traditional instruments, such as the aforementioned flute; the shamisen which is a kind of banjo and the koto which reminded me of a harp but is more horizontal than vertical. There were also martial arts on display, mostly in the form of some impressive and blindingly fast staff work

There was a lot of dance as well, energetic and beautifully coordinated; you could see the Maori influence, particularly when the men danced, with some Japanese aikido style martial arts thrown in for good measure

It reminded me of Cirque de Soleil in that it was a complete show: Humour, action, emotion, energy and stillness. There were moments of total silence, moments of melody that were measured and serene, when flutes softly ululated like rippling waters and the dancers sang traditional Japanese music that was both mournful and powerful at the same time

And of course there were moments of energy, dancers flying around the stage with staffs or flags, cymbals clashing, a musician playing his shamisen like a taiko Eric Clapton, all of it propelled by the drums, whose tone and beats and timbre seemed to be almost endless

The show is all about motion, not just the bodies of the performers but the music itself. There is a recurring them of drummers "throwing" the beat into the air where another guy catches it and bangs it across his drum before tossing it on. The music is also thrown to the audience; there is a lot of audience participation where were encouraged through  hand claps to mimic the drummer's beat ... let's just say that there were a lot of white people in the audience.

I was fascinated by the physicality of the troupe and not just in their dancing and kata's. This kind of drumming is extemely physical. You could see that the drummers often exaggerated their movements with their sticks to illustrate what the were doing but there was more to it than that. Asian martial arts talk about chi, about the strength and power inside each of us that we can call upon when needed. Especially when they were playing these huge drums you could see the performers call upon that chi, their inner power, to coax the music out of the drum and to send it out to us

The entire show was mesmerizing and like Cirque de Soleil, I was rather in awe in the skill of the performers. I also appreciated how ardent they were in making sure that the audience was entertained. From the choreography to the costumes to the set design to the music, everything was very well thought out. The troupe has been in existence for 10 years and it shows

When I bought the tickets I didn't know a great deal about the show. What I read and from a couple of clips I saw on Youtube I thought it would be good. I was wrong. It was incredible. Slick and polished yes but with moments of simple performance that you you knew that these performers felt the thunder of the drums, the thunder inside. And for a couple of hours, I felt it too