By Donald H. Harrison

SAN DIEGO, Calif— Fathom, an inter-disciplinary production bringing together the choreography of John Malashock, the art works of Junko Chodos, and the music of Ariel Blumenthal—respectively born and raised  in the United States, Japan and Israel—is loosely a Buddhist story infused with some Jewish ideas and forms. 

In interacting with each other, two religious traditions and three art forms create a Jewish-Buddhist artistic hybrid, a "Jew-Bu" performance, that may well induce within audiences the feeling of being a baby reaching up in delight from its crib towards a mobile.  The baby hears the music, senses the motion, apprehends the bright colors, and wants to get closer to the wonderful object, yet is in no position to fully comprehend it.  

That was the analogy that felt right to my  87-year-old father-in-law, Sam Zeiden, and I on Saturday night, May 13, as we discussed the production while driving home from the refurbished North Park Theatre where Fathom will continue its run through May 21.

Pursuing the analogy a day or so later with  members of the artistic team, I realized none of them fully comprehended their work—at least not in its totality. Malashock pointed out "there are some ideas that can't be expressed in words—that's why there is dance," and the same may be said equally about music and the visual arts.  If the wellsprings of one's own work are ineffable,  how much more difficult is it to fathom each other's creative processes? 

And yet, by creating together, Chodos, Malashock and Blumenthal  have created a body of work—even as the parents of that baby lying in the crib, by their coming together, created something new and beautiful.  Of  course, the parents understood that the child was produced by procreation, but sexual union was only the most basic part of their collaboration.  Why did they find each other attractive in the first place?

 John Malashock

 What chemical processes governed their sexual response?  What genetic processes were at work as the child's gender and features were determined?

As many questions might be asked about the creations of not only Chodos, Malashock and Blumenthal, but also of  Junko's Jewish husband, Rafael, with whom she has a collaboration within the collaboration;  about each of the seven dancers, especially Michel Mizerany who is on stage almost the entire performance;  the San Diego Master Chorale;  and percussionist Steven Schick.

All stories have their origins somewhere, and, in this case, we can start with Junko Chodos, who grew up in Japan and was familiar with the biography and legends surrounding Kuukai, the founder of one form of Japanese Buddhism.  Born  Saeki no Mao in 774, he was a bright student trained in the principles of Confucianism. But feeling that he knew little about ultimate questions such as man's purpose, he studied Buddhism. Early in his career, he sat at a place on the island of Shikoku overlooking the sea and repeated a mantra one million times in an effort to improve his spiritual memory.  From that experience he took the name Kuukai, which means "sky and sea."

To learn more, he went to Chang'An, China, where he studied under Hui-Kuo, known as the 7th abbot of Escoteric Buddhism.  Although the master had 1,000 disciples, he recognized in Kuukai the spiritual figure|

                                                                                                                    Junko Chodos

who would be his successor. After only three months of study, Kuukai was ordained as the 8th abbot.  He returned to Japan with trunks laden with sacred scrolls, calligraphy and art, and created Shingon (True Word)  Buddhism that united both spiritual and physical principles with particular emphasis on the saying of the Buddha that "in this fathom-long body, the whole of the universe is revealed."  The religion also merged ideas contained in the indigenous Shinto religion of Japan with those of Buddhism.

Kuukai opened schools that both the poor and the rich could attend, and created a phonic system for writing the Japanese language, thereby extending literacy to the common people.  There are innumerable folk tales about Kuukai, some of them similar to the tales Jews tell about Moses or that Christians tell about Jesus.  Kuukai is credited with bringing forth a spring, healing the sick, giving sight to the blind, making the crippled walk, digging a well and taming an unruly river among other miracles.

One can circumnavigate the island of Shikoka on a pilgrimage route that will take you to 88 temples located in a variety of topographical zones, thereby imitating the experiences of  Kuukai as he came to understand the Buddhist teaching  that all men and women have the seed of Buddhahood within them, and, therefore, are able to achieve enlightenment by practicing the right precepts.

At the very first temple on the pilgrimage, visitors are reminded of what are called the Ten Commandments of Buddhism, some of which are identical to, and perhaps incorporated,  commandments that western religions believe that Moses received at Sinai.  Among these are 1) Do not kill; 2) Do not steal; 3) Do not commit adultery; 4) Do not tell a lie; 5) Do not use flowery language; 6) Do not speak ill of others; 7) Do not be double tongued; 8) Do not be covetous; 9) Do not be angry; 1)) Do not be perverse.

Some believe that Kuukai never died, that he resides on Mt. Koya, where is fixed in a permanent state of meditation.  After he left the realm of this world in 835, Kuukai was given the honorific name Kobo Daishi.

In 2001, Chodos and Malashock were introduced.  At the time, her series of works, "Escoteric Buddhism: Sexual ecstasy, clean and pure, this too is the realm of the Bodhisattva (State of Enlightenment)."  The idea that the entire universe is reflected in the body intrigued Malashock.  Rafael Chodos, Junko's Jewish husband, elaborated upon this idea, sharing these thoughts with me in an e-mail exchange: 

The Esoteric Buddhism which Kuukai studied in Chang'An was a development from Tantric Buddhism, which celebrated the body and sexuality as one of the great sources of energy which could move people towards enlightenment.  The sexuality which Tantric Buddhism celebrated was not lustful or orgiastic:  it was the sexual energy which comes from being aligned with the energy of the Universe.  The central teaching of Kuukai's new religion was an extension of this doctrine.  Kuukai's teaching that enlightenment could be achieved in this lifetime carries with it the implication that the body is not an obstacle to enlightenment, but is instead a vehicle.  

How different from Kuukai's views are the dominant Western teachings about the nature of the body. Pythagoras and the Orphics taught that the body is a tomb.  The notion persisted into Christian times that there is an opposition between the body and the soul: that the soul is the higher aspect of the complete person and the body is the lower aspect.  The good life requires a rejection of the demands of the body in order to respond to the demands of the soul.

The Jewish idea is that the complete person is a body animated by a soul.  After God had created Adam out of the dust of the earth, He "breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul" [Genesis 2:7].   In Jewish thought, the soul needs the body in order to act:  by itself, the soul is incomplete.  So Saadia Gaon, who lived a century after Kuukai, taught that the good life can be achieved through prayer (which he saw as the proper way towards the understanding of God) and good deeds - but even this idea, though closer, is a world away from Kuukai's enthusiastic embracing of the body as a necessary vehicle towards enlightenment.  

Malashock said he and Junko Chodos decided that they would like to collaborate together on a piece associated with the images of Kukkai and "that was when I began to look at how to bring my own background and Jewish spirituality in as well.  I wasn't looking for Jewish content but I knew that it would find its way in there.  One trusts that one's background would go into the work.  It also was a conscious choice not to make things sound more Jewish, but to chose a composer (Ariel Blumenthal) with whom I felt there would be a good resonance between himself and myself in the Jewish realm."

Blumenthal and Malashock had come to know each other through the Center for Jewish Creativity and Culture founded by Ruth Rauch and the late John Rauch in Los Angeles.

The collaborators decided not to make Fathom a biographical work, because that would be too limiting, but rather one, in which the audience, through the dancers, could experience "the body as universe" within a series of scenes that evoked the life and legends of Kuukai.  

The production is divided into two acts, with the printed program hinting at what the dancers will try to communicate on stage. Act 1, Scene 1 is "Sorcery" in which "ritual and ceremony brought to mundane activities inspires awe and spirituality."  We see Mizerany, as Kuukai, commanding people to take the forms of animals—the choreography for which Malashock said was inspired by three of Junko's  mylar panels which hang over the stage during this portion of  

                                                                                                                           Ariel Blumenthal

   
the performance, each 3 1/2 feet wide and 10 feet deep.  In our email exchange, Rafael Chodos, elaborated upon the scene:

Kuukai left the normal career track (brilliant student who would be educated and then go into government service) and went into the forest, where he lived the life of a sorcerer.  There he meditated, swung from tree to tree, ate rocks and minerals - in order to absorb their powers.  In Japanese culture, the mountain forests and streams are places similar to what the desert is in Judaeo-Christian religious culture: a place "away from the world", where one can be closer to the elemental forces, or to God.  -- The visual image is of a wild figure, almost bird-like, who leaps into the midst of a mysterious forest. Kuukai's life-path is very similar to that of the Old Testament prophets:  he left the world and communed directly with God, and when he was ready he returned to the world and made a huge contribution to the society he had left before.  This notion of the prophet is similar.

Act 1, Scene 2 is entitled "Communicating with Nature," with the program explaining "Magical powers are evoked from the integration of nature and human behavior." Rafael  Chodos describes it this way:

By now, Kuukai has grown and instead of being merely a sorcerer, he is almost a priest. The visuals here are more lush and less frightening:  Kuukai is communicating with nature, not trying to control it...We see a maturation of the relationship with nature away from a hostile, manipulative one (magic) into a more loving one.

Here, one of the most specifically Jewish elements of the production enters the score, as Blumenthal has the San Diego Master Chorale chant in Hebrew words from Deuteronomy 20:19, "you shall not destroy its trees by swinging an axe against them; for you may eat from them, and you shall not cut them down.  For is the tree of the field a man, that it should be besieged by you."  The biblical  instructions are considered some of the first ethical guidelines ever set forth for soldiers..

Act I, Scene III is "The Journey of the Spirit," described in the program as a "perilous journey over turbulent seas to a new world."  This is said to parallel "the journey of spirit" and to promote "an appreciation for the coexistence of diverse people—a 'universal' vision.  Rafael Chodos explains: 

Kuukai went on this journey in his late 20s.  The visuals portray the perilous ocean, the shipwreck he experienced, and then the ancient city of Chang'An - at the eastern end of the Silk Road, the most cosmopolitan city in the whole world in the 9th Century, where all cultures encountered each other.  Kuukai lived for 2 years "al admat nechar", on foreign land; but instead of weeping, he eagerly absorbed all the cultural influences to which he was exposed and integrated them into his new religion.  In this way, he encapsulated what Judaism has done through the centuries: existing in diaspora, it has absorbed the wisdom of the world outside and yet preserved its own identity.  Kuukai brought Esoteric Buddhism back to Nara (the Japanese capital at that time) with him, but he integrated it with the native Shinto - and this formed a new religion.  

Following the intermission, Act II begins with the Tantric world, reprising the title of Junko's exhibition: "Sexual ecstasy, clean and pure, this too is the realm of Boddhisatva."  The dancers, men and women, men and men, women and women, seem to convey  passion through the tension of their restraint. Rafael Chodos suggests the comparison of 

Genesis, and Saadya ( the body is essential to spiritual life because the spirit needs the body to express itself in this world) to Tantric ideas (the body is a vehicle towards enlightenment because it enables us to vibrate in sympathy with universal sexual energy).

 Act II, Scene II, "Moving Mandala" invites the audience to "transcend a world that cannot be controlled by thoughts through the unity of the intellect and emotion."  Here, too, we have a Jewish infusion: 

The visuals are intended to be pages from a cosmic notebook, each page drawing our attention to some deep truth about the way the universe is put together.  You will recognize the kabbalistic body charts showing the Sefirot, which are quite similar to the mandalas made in India, Tibet, China, and Japan.  This style of philosophical drawing seems to have gained currency in the 7th Century and following, and Jewish thinkers experimented with it as well.  The fact is, Junko actually looked at various Kabbalistic charts and made one of her mandalas "in that image."

  Kabbalah sefirot                                       Mandala by Junko Chodos

   

Finally, there is Act II, Scene III "Eternal Meditation on the Mountain," reinvoking the Kuukai legend.  "At home in nature, the spirit lives for eternity." 

The visual shows the mountain with lights - reflecting the ceremony Kuukai invented in which everyone lit a candle and walked up the mountain with it, to show that rich and poor, great and low, we all illuminate the world.  The text Ariel used is actually from one of Kuukai's poems, which comes from Buddhist ideas -- not Jewish ones.  But the symbolic value of light - oil lamps, candles -- this is very possibly something Kuukai learned in Chang'An, because it was not Japanese.  And it probably comes at least indirectly from Judaeo-Christian sources, although I'm not sure of that.

Discussing Junko's impact on him, Malashock told me: "The imagery is so powerful. .. It is not as direct as the music, I can't choreograph to the look of the art work, as I can to the sound of the rhythm,  but something like the nature section, with all the trees, suggested to me, humans taking on animalistic form. It suggested the atmosphere."

With Blumenthal, the collaboration was more traditional.  Used to writing music for moods for television productions, Blumenthal took Malashock's thoughts about what he wanted to convey, then wrote music to suit. In some cases, Malashock was quite specific, even to the length of time that he wanted a certain segment to run, in other cases, he gave Blumenthal more free rein.

In preparing for the production, Malashock said that he visited the island of Shikoka, which he found to be a spiritual place stirring in him feelings similar to those he had experienced in Sfad, home of mystical Judaism. In creating the music, however, Blumenthal said he did not attempt to illustrate mysticism with the klezmer sounds that Sfat has embraced in recent years.  Instead, he said, he tried to express an idea with musical instruments that was parallel to what Malashock was attempting to do with the human body—to show that instruments themselves can contain a universe, indeed, that they can sound very human.

Blumenthal is familiar with many realms of music, including classical. Rabin, his tribute to the slain Israeli prime minister, has been played by numerous orchestras, including recently by David Amos and the Tifereth Israel Community Orchestra.  But for Fathom, Blumenthal turned to the digital synthesizer in an effort to show how various sounds could be manipulated—even as the folk figure of Kuukai, on stage, could manipulate the other dancers.

Rafael Chodos said that as a student in Japan, his wife was very influenced by Martin Buber;s concepts of "I and Thou," as well as by kabalistic teachings.