Fire and Ashes: Making the Ballet RAkU

Bay Area filmmaker Shirley Sun’s engaging dance film goes behind the scenes with composer Shinji Eshima and San Francisco Ballet resident choreographer Yuri Possokhov as they recount their collaboration with the original cast of RAkU. Set in historic Japan, the ballet is a fictional tale filled with passion, lust, loss, pain, and compassion, based on a true event: the burning of the beautiful Temple of the Golden Pavilion in Kyoto. Fire and Ashes unites Eastern and Western cultures in music, literature, philosophy, and dance, as Possokhov’s choreography integrates Japanese Noh theater and Butoh performance with classical and contemporary ballet.