"This desire to understand, to extract pieces of sense and beauty, and our presence on earth is at the heart of Kagemi-Beyond the Metaphors of Mirrors. With seven scenes in one hour and twenty-five minutes, constructed with sand and water, ash and blood, life and death. His (Amagatsu) pieces have a fundamental resemblance, but never the same, each emerges from the last piece, as if the choreographer is presenting a definitive image that has never existed before. Amagatsu repeats his obsessions again and again.

Touching lightly on the floor, white immaculate lotus leaves float in rows. When the dancers lie themselves under lotus leaves at the beginning of the performance, this scene opens up a magical dream. With shaved heads, their bodies powdered by white from top to toe, the seven dancers, including the choreographer himself, may be interpreted in many ways: angelic figures with sweet gestures, men or women, sensual but far from erotic, they fascinate us."
- Le Monde (France)

"Each movement is a work of art."
- Aftonbladet (Sweden)

"Butoh with humor. Sankai Juku lives up to the expectations and a bit more."
- Dagens Nyheter (Sweden)

"The human being as a mirror of nature."
- Svesk Dagbladet (Sweden)

"Sophisticated beauty...Sankai Juku creates its unique art form that transcends the times."
- Nihon Keizai Shimbun (Japan)

"Sankai Juku has transformed the bodies of suffering or of negativity that are often seen in Butoh into dazzlingly aesthetic spectacles. The big white artificial flowers, that cover the whole stage, look like lotus flowers in the age of Buddha or maybe water lilies in the Monet paintings. The dancers move as elegantly as waterweeds, and they are free from any special meanings or burdens. Sensuality takes the shape of an intellectual design. None of the movement, costumes, nor the beauty of stage setting can be expressed with a single word."
- Asahi Shimbun (Japan)

PRESS ON SANKAI JUKU

"The dance antithesis of effusive Broadway musicals and spasmodic club dancing can be found with Sankai Juku ('the studio of mountain and sea'), the prime ambassador of the butoh dance form. Born in Japan in the devastated aftermath of World War II, butoh can suggest inner sorrow, but it can also be infused with the present-moment transcendence sought by many Eastern religions. It is slow, deliberate, almost hypnotic, and beautiful in its simplicity."
- Flavorpill NYC

"The singular glory of Sankai Juku is that it achieves almost pure metaphor."
- Time

"[Ushio Amagatsu] conveys the infinitely minute yet spellbinding transformations of a world in constant metamorphosis."
- Dance Magazine

"Attending a piece of choreography of Ushio Amagatsu of Sankai Juku, is an encounter with a man who has explored the existence and poetry for more than twenty years, open to the public as a space of meditation. Spectators are even absorbed in the very fine ramification of movement. Strange processes, between hypnosis and vigilance, that invite spectators, to the very heart of mystery of dance."
- Le Monde