“‘Handsome Blue Sky’ recounts, among other things, the atomic catastro­phe of World War II through the transformations of the body. It began in the aftermath: a powerful solo in near dark­ness, with Mr. Murobushi hunkered down on his knees. Only the backs of his feet were visible as he raised himself up with painful slowness. He was the collective survivor, alone in a tunneling silence. His body could be seen as a chronicle in which each part was a character. His feet curled and rolled feelingly like hands along the stage, while his hands reached down to numbly pad the ground. The work then moved on to re-cre­ate the horrifying event itself. With large sheets of brass, three dancers ro­tated the reflective surfaces toward the audience, producing distant thunder and explosions with their fists, fol­lowed by flashes of blinding light. In other places, too, the brass sheets combined with original choreography to create aesthetically charged visions of apocalypse.

Although “Handsome Blue Sky” pays tribute to Tatsumi Hijikata’s pio­neering influence (it premiered at the Hijikata memorial in Japan), Mr. Murobushi uses it as a point of departure integrating into the form a more contemporary outlook. He leavened Saturday’s performance with the blackest yeast. There were passages of des­perate humor: a round of finger-point­ing accusations, homoerotic play, and even a rock-‘n’-roll coda to John Lennon’s “Woman” – “I know you understand the little child inside the man” – while the dancers made agonized faces.

The humor served to reinforce the centrality of the body as a seat of hon­est expression, even redemption. The dancers receded into the shadows, a humble exit into the wings known as atozusari, but for Mr. Muroboshi their arms were raised in triumph.”

– Aeron Kopriva, “Channeling Hiroshima”, The New York Sun, 2005