How real do you really want it to be? With art, is that necessary? And what is actually real? A work of art can increase in value a thousandfold if it turns out that it was not made by an amateur, but a real master, or vice versa: a painting that passed for a Rembrandt for centuries can lose all value if it turns out that it was made by one of his pupils. 

Abba draws packed halls in London as a hologram. Dutch concert halls plan half their season full of tribute and cover bands. And, while we're on the subject: isn't that whole Concertgebouw Orchestra a vulgar cover band? After all, they are playing music first performed and written hundreds of years ago? Is that still real?

Japanese response

Let me take a stab at explaining why I spent a night awake after my second night at this year's Holland Festival. Blame it on About Kazuo Ohno by Takao Kawaguchi. Or rather, that performance in which dancer Takao Kawaguchi dances an exact copy of some legendary moments by Butoh legend Kazuo Ohno. And the thoughts it evokes, the conversations that follow. 

Butoh was the Japanese answer to modern dance in the West in the second half of the last century. Outside the established order, in old industrial premises, something inverse to Japanese traditional dance was emerging. These dance makers, of whom Kazuo Ohno was the main one, no longer worked from form, but put content, emotion, inspiration at the centre. This, of course, made their performances unique. It was different every night, depending on the inspiration of the performers, the audience, the weather, the news of the day.

Gruesome image 

A few of those unique performances by Kazuo Ohno have been captured on film. Most of the material only from the time when Ohno was already quite elderly. You can probably watch those films somewhere. I imagine gritty images, coarse-grained and dark. They won't draw full houses just because of the technical quality of the projection. So 12 years ago, Japanese dancer Takao Kawaguchi thought of copying Kazuo Ohno's filmed dance live, accompanied by the films' original sound. 

That gave the hour-and-a-half dance at Amsterdam's Frascati theatre something very special. What were we watching? Kawaguchi danced a literal copy of the great example Ohno, and with that it seemed like the old dancer came back to life. Yet I also felt a lack. However technically perfect the re-enactment of the old dance performance was, the sound told me a story in black and white, smoking spectators, small auditoriums and a Western audience experiencing something completely unfamiliar for the first time. I very much wanted to be with that sound and not this exact copy. 

Not exactly

But so the copy was not exact, because that was not Kawaguchi's aim either. In the follow-up interview, he said he copied Ohno's movements exactly, but he doesn't feel anything about that. Or, rather, he does not copy the feeling that drove Ohno to his movements, because he does not know that feeling. He only shows that outside. Exact, precise, perfect. But he is counting and measuring. Not feeling. 

So the question is whether that perfect copy of the exterior is equally capable of stirring a contemporary audience. And what exactly is that: stirring? Kawaguchi brought a deeply impressive performance about fragility and old age, especially in precisely copying the last public appearance of the old dancer, near 100 and demented, and supported by an assistant, but still dancing, if only with his hands.

Avatar

This was technical playing of the same unmatchable level as a holographic stage on which Abba appears to perform. Kawaguchi has now spent 12 years developing into an exact avatar of his great role model. But how real is that?

And what is actually real in this case? Doesn't that answer lie with us, in the stands? Do we want to be moved by a 97-year-old flesh-and-blood human being performing his death rattle live, 6 metres away, or do we settle for the copy? What would you pay more for? After all, Kawaguchi could be considered at least as great an artist as Ohno, only their stile is diametrically different. Ohno danced from feeling, Kawaguchi copies the form and leaves the feeling to us.

Confusing, isn't it? And that after those controversial opening night of this Holland Festival, with those rather awkward, AI-controlled avatars that were so eager to be real. And my plea thereon for the practice of imitation as the best vehicle for a living tradition. How do I place this freeze in that, and is it actually a freeze at all? You can lie awake at least one night over that. 

Until you get up the next morning, walk the dog and turn on the news.