Subscribe
Earth goddess
Not that many people showed up for Sandii Suzuki’s collaborative performance with the kalimba player Bun of Koh-Tao and the Te Hive Hui No Manumere Dancers, which I believe are from her hula dancing school. Sandii’s evolution from 1980s bilingual rock singer to world music maven to award-winning hula dancer provides her with plenty of outlets for her creativity, and the show at the Orange Court was publicized as being “Earth Conscious.”
I thought that meant “natural,” though apparently it has a more spiritual connotation. Bun and his group play a mix of electric and acoustic tribal instruments. They opened their set with a cacophony of low tones produced by didgeridoo and something called a Native American flute. Out of this mess of sound, Sandii emerged on a platform in a spotlight, dressed in a long blue dress and posed like some kind of Venus. Quite glamorous. Then three hula girls in revealing taupe ensembles started dancing quite sensuously while the music picked up the rhythm. There was even a break beat.
Sandii sang songs in Japanese, English, and various Southeast Asian and Polynesian languages. The Japanese sounded familiar–probably an old pop song adapted to the ethnic pretensions of the production–but the English may have been translated from some other language, since it was often awkward and inadvertently humorous.
The dancers were probably the best thing. “Miss Achiko the fire dancer” came out with half a dozen lit torches and twirled them while doing a lively hula. A dozen dancers performed an elaborately choreographed number while Sandii played a conga-like drum. She also did a solo dance to an Okinawan song that featured a lot of Hawaiian sign language. The sign language was nice since it preempted Sandii’s stage patter, which tended toward the cutely endearing, except when she occasionally spoke English and especially when she gave a shout out to the crowd and the festival. Then the rocker in her came out.
photo: Ueda
