Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on May 2014

It’s been a long road for Diqui James (pictured below right) and the band of amazing artists populating his hard-hitting, full-immersion spectacle, Fuerza Bruta.

When the Argentine military dictatorship ended in the early 1980s, James joined like-minded young artists to unleash an explosive burst of creativity onto the streets of Buenos Aires. La Organización Negra (The Black Group) nurtured a dark and almost violent form of street theater, and as its popularity grew, its members were soon climbing the walls of buildings and performing aerial acrobatics suspended from massive pieces of constructed scaffolding. An offshoot group with a more positive—and commercial—spin, De La Guarda, achieved global recognition and even came to Japan in 2003, but it still did not represent what James hoped to artistically achieve.

Now with Fuerza Bruta, James aims to continue the tradition of events such as carnival and street theater, which broke the social and cultural boundaries between Argentina’s literate elite and the less educated lower classes. And that formula is working to break international boundaries as well.

“It’s a social, not individual experience,” James tells Metropolis. “When you gather 1,000 Japanese people, they will react differently from 1,000 Argentinians. It’s a different approach from a physical point of view: we kiss each other when we say hello, we embrace and talk and move our hands a lot. In Japan, not as much—we’re breaking social rules, so the reaction is very different. And watching people’s reactions… the Japanese are so extreme. They are super calm and then wild in one second. I love it.”

James believes that his audience is inseparable from the show, providing it with a key piece of its street-festival rawness. “It’s a nice connection, knowing that the audience can change parts of the show depending on how much they want to participate and interact, but even just watching, you’re part of it.”

Indeed, Fuerza Bruta’s performers regularly storm through the all-standing crowd, drawing audience members out by the wrists or smashing paper boxes full of confetti over their heads. The various stages and set pieces rumble across the floor as the crowd scrambles to get out of the way, while an aerial pool of water gradually descends so low the audience can reach up and touch it as performers slam their bodies against the transparent plastic plane from above.

“It’s the opposite of a circus, where you’re watching people do things that you will never do in your life. Here it’s the opposite. We reach a performing aspect where audience members think ‘I want to be in the pool, I want to be dancing,’ and they feel this is something they can do.”

Not to say the cast isn’t talented: Some of James’ performers have been working with his company since 1999, and he’s always pushing forward with new ideas. “I sit down and start talking about an idea and everybody will say, ‘Ahh I saw something like that…’ and you think that it’s all already been done. But I don’t care, because I will do it differently. After we’ve finished it then I’ll check out what they were talking about and it’s totally different. I think it’s important to go ahead and believe in your own instinct. If you do something, it will stand out from what anyone else does.”

James never pushes his performers beyond their comfort points, though, and they communicate with complete trust. He feels that enjoying what they do is vital for both his cast’s safety and the show’s high-energy atmosphere. Performers who feel safe, both creatively and physically, are performers who are willing to test their limits on their own, he reasons. More than physical daring, he demands the creativity to enjoy trying out new things, and the focus to reproduce the same show day after day while touring far and wide.

It took nine years of discussion and preparation to bring Fuerza Bruta and its elaborate props—or “toys,” as James calls them—to Japan. Yet this is only the beginning, with a bigger show planned in New York later this year. James always has his eye on doing the next new thing in his own inimitable way.

Until Jun 29 at Akasaka Sacas. See stage listings for details. http://fuerzabruta.jp