Bamboo, Tamed, Bends to a Master's Touch (2011/09/16)
   Bamboo is as prevalent as a weed here, its tenacious roots and furious growth the bane of the home gardener. So it may have seemed like bringing coals to Newcastle when two truckloads of the stuff -- 1,800 30-foot-long shafts in all -- were delivered to the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts last week from a bamboo plantation in Augusta, Ga. Bamboo is the raw material of an extraordinary installation in the Kennedy Center atrium that will be open to the public next week. Its mastermind is Hiroshi Teshigahara, the Japanese sculptor, film director (best known for Woman in the Dunes), ceramicist and grandmaster of the modern Sogetsu school of ikebana, or Japanese flower arranging.
   Mr. Teshigahara, 70, is constructing a walk-through sculpture that vaguely resembles an enormous, cavernous fish. A winding path, paved with sheaves of split bamboo, makes Jonahs of visitors, leading them through an undulating tunnel 120 feet long.
   Among his helpers are volunteers from the local Sogetsu club and the Corcoran School of Art. They have been working in the basement of the Eisenhower Theater, scouring, rinsing and sorting the apple-green shafts. Each hefty tube, an inch thick and three to four inches in diameter, is split lengthwise into eight strips with a tool that resembles an oversize apple corer. Once split, the strong shafts become flexible. Like willow branches, the graceful plumes are bent to create the tunnel that is transforming the colorless atrium into a cross between meditation room, fun house and panda heaven.
   Mr. Teshigahara calls his art a hybrid of sculpture, arrangement and cinema. "Where traditional ikebana is meant to be viewed only from one side, my work is meant to be enveloping," he said. "Sometimes I feel I am coated, soaked in bamboo." And indeed, he was wearing a collarless shirt, designed by his friend Issey Miyake, that matched the powdery acid-green bamboo sawdust that seemed to be everywhere.
   "The Japanese use bamboo more effectively than in the West," he added. "In Japan, bamboo is a symbol of architectural strength. Its roots are used to stabilize the earth." Though a model of grace and suppleness, it is also strong enough to have been used for centuries as fortification.
   The intallation, called "Entering Art Nature," cost $250,000 and was paid for by corporate and private donations. It is part of a series on Japanese art at the Kennedy Center and kicks off Washington's Cherry Blossom Festival.
   As one might expect from a film maker, Mr. Teshigahara uses site-specific lighting, creating striking patterns with the bamboo ribs. And as visitors walk through, they will hear a synthesizer piece called "Bamboo Breathing Space." Sostenuto chords, airy flutes and lazy percussion at first suggest water dripping slow-motion into a puddle, then gently burbling rapids. Visitors may feel as if they were standing on stepping stones in a meandering brook.
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