Image credit: The Nekaa Room: Dark Matter, Sachiyo Takahashi, 2012

Presented by Boca Del Lupo as part of their Micro Performance Series, The Nekaa Room: Dark Matter is one (tiny) black sheep. In a culture that fetishes cute animals on everything from accessories to clothing to food to characters in major motion pictures, cuteness, especially anthropomorphized cuteness in animals, has been the facade of narrative rather than its target. But here on Anderson St in a tiny room with a tiny sheep, Sachiyo Takahashi assembles and reassembles a narrative exploring the dark side of nekaa (cuteness).

Don’t be fooled by the sock monkeys and gummi bears; the underlying principle of the show scrutinizes our human tendencies to empathize through cuteness. The cute know how to milk it, and the usual suspects always offer to help out those who are cute, but the sinister consequences offered by Takahashi have scarred me from fondue. 

As one of her microscopic live cinema-theatre works, The Nekaa Room is most interesting in the transference of Takahashi’s miniature world into a live cinematic narrative. Using what looks like a delay effect, a blue gel filter, manual zooming, a deft pair of tweezers, and a prerecorded soundtrack, the performance put on by Takahashi is utterly transparent, yet full of magic and mystery. I felt as if I had stepped inside somebody’s unfolding imagination, and I was curious if not a little horrified. Funny and alarming, The Nekaa Room will thankfully not leave anyone exclaiming “That’s so cute!”

The Nekaa Room: Dark Matter runs March 7 - 10 at The Anderson Street Space: 1405 Anderson St, Granville Island.  7pm, 7:45pm, 8:30pm, 9:15pm each night.