Megumi Eda: Of Poison and Milk

Elisa Frasson / December 2024

How can the language of dance reconnect with the past? Choreographer and performer Megumi Eda investigates traumatic family and universal memories through the lens of a poetic multimedia performance.

 
The foyer of Dock 11 is a tiny space where, thanks to soft light and the ever-present beautiful fresh flowers, combined with the kindness of the operators, is always a nice place to have a chat and, in the winter season, find respite from the cold.
In a few minutes, this same cosy space turned into a suffocating one for me. From one corner, the voice of actor Tomoya Kawamura, sitting on a chair by a desk lit by a small abat-jour skylight, speaks of a difficult past, an alienating story of his grandfather’s time as a kamikaze pilot in World War II Japan. Kawamura moves into the audience, but addresses someone who is not present. Along the way, it becomes clear that one of his interlocutors is his own grandfather, who narrowly escaped death as a pilot. This dramaturgical situation causes me an effect of disorientation — taking me out of time or rather into another time — as if anticipating the complex historical and personal emotional entanglement that will follow in the piece.
 
Entering the theatre, composer Reiko Yamada is positioned at the side of the stage, dressed as a nurse. Eda is projected on the screen via a live connection from the dressing room while she is talking on the phone. I don’t quite understand the subject of the phone call, but the feeling I get is of a heartbreaking conversation with a loved one. I then understand that her interlocutor is her grandmother.
 
Next, Eda walks onto the stage and wraps herself in a dress, as if it were a blanket. Her gestures are composed and elegant. With the mobile phone in her hand, she enlarges certain details of her body, such as the lines between her skin or locks of her hair. This footage from her phone, transmitted wirelessly and displayed on the big screen, is intimate and constantly shifts my attention from the screen to the stage and vice versa, creating two parallel landscapes.

Photo: Morvarid K.

She then manipulates a pearl necklace and dips it into a bucket of water. I realise
afterwards that the pearls represent a memory of her grandmother, who wore them all the time. In conjunction, they represent a reminder of the poison used by the nurses. The nurses gave poison hidden in milk to soldiers who had no hope of recovery, and they themselves carried poison to be taken before they were captured.  
 
Almost in response to this pain, Eda develops dance sequences on the floor: balancing on her coccyx, her limbs come close to her torso and spread out in balances and plastic shapes. Her extremities, hands and feet, expand into space and then contract. I felt that being on the floor was the only way to support the emotional weight of the story that was slowly unfolding dramaturgically.
The music then increases its pace and tempo in a regular rhythm. Eda picks up the phone, calls her grandmother back, and finally they can let out a cathartic cry in unison.
 
Please Cry is inspired by the story of the Japanese nurses who, after being conditioned for years to think that crying during the war was shameful, were only allowed to cry at the end of the war, when life or death decisions had to be made, as if crying were a liberating moment. You cannot cry because being strong is good for your country. Certainly, this also makes us think about how World War II basically ended with the atomic bomb, leaving no possibility of a decision. Echoes of a critique of fascism creep in, and as if leaping through time, we think of the situation today, where we might conclude that the concept of the sovereign nation is coming back into fashion.

Photo: Morvarid K.

By creating a solo piece based on video interaction, live sound, and dance, characterised by incisive body language and a dramaturgical structure that articulates the scene in sharp episodes, Eda offers a reflection not only on war, but on the trauma it perpetuates over the years.
In the programme notes, Eda explains, “One day, I learned from a photo that my grandma had been a military nurse for Japan in WW2. Later, I saw a documentary about a woman who had, like her, been in the war as a military nurse. She confessed the traumatic horrific experiences that she had been silent about – and I couldn’t forget these images. Perhaps my grandmother had had a similar experience? I don’t really know…”
 
Born from untold experiences that shape family stories, and developed in a ritualistic way, Please Cry evokes an at times traumatic personal history, an almost cathartic process of re-establishing an umbilical connection with family, specifically with a grandmother, and how these unspeakable experiences affect family stories.
Eda recounts how the trauma of war is not just “a memory of the past, but an “enduring legacy” that is passed down from generation to generation; an act of suffering and subsequent liberation that spans the decades, a liberation that occurs through the performative potential of storytelling.

Photo: Bernd Kumar.

By using forms and means of composition that juxtapose layers of personal and historical understanding, this piece combines intimacy and a personal narrative with a political indictment, not only about a past history, but also with strong links to what we are currently experiencing globally. Though it sounds rhetorical, will and if so, how, will today’s increasing war trauma be overcome?
In a delicate and fragile way, Please Cry is characterised by Eda’s ability and sensitivity to place social and cultural issues at the centre of the theme of creation, eluding all rhetoric and remaining on a poetic level. The extent to which Eda brings attention to the tiny intimacies in considering these themes is so disarmingly clear that it resonates within me, even in the days following the performance itself.
 
By acknowledging personal and global histories as a source of narration, Eda interweaves artistic creation with a trauma that travels across generations, through a work that speaks to us of political power in a personal context, where the personal/global history bears the marks of destruction and pain. It is as if Eda’s poetry leads us to intimately question ourselves about our relationship to pain.
It is as if through a revelatory journey and understanding of the past, Eda ventures into the performance as a spiritual exercise, re-creating a possible existence where we start again by taking care of ourselves and those around us.