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OK, so the comparison is crass. Sankai Juku is anything but a sideshow. Their repertoire is rooted in Butoh, an anti-Western, post-Hiroshima art form that means nothing less than Dance of Total Darkness. They are feted by the French avant-garde. Sankai Juku inherits a vision of life that is stark, spare and, more often than not, anguished, where wordless bodies enact the primal trauma of existence or simply the flow with the universal energy of being.

And we, the audience, are left to ponder its enigmas with few clues (Programme notes tell us only that Kagemi relates to shadows and mirrors, two staples of Eastern philosophy). Kneeling men gesticulating furiously seem to be servants of a prophet proselytising in a universal sign language. Or, squatting and bouncing like restless chimps, two dancers come face to face, intrigued as though by the discovery of their own reflection – an allegory of the human story? Then there is the gaggle of androgynous whores, grinning lasciviously and smearing themselves with blood or dirt. Are they personifications of greed and destruction?

It doesn’t matter. The very frisson of Kagemi is its inscrutability. We Westerners love confronting the inadequacy of our rationalism and Amagatu capitalises on that, giving us also polished performances and exquisite stagecraft to hold our attention when our metaphysical appreciation wanes. In fact, Kagemi is, more than anything, a gorgeous visual spectacle. The stage begins as a field of mushrooms that rise and hover hallucinogenically above the dancers throughout the work. During the beautiful central section, where three men grasp, grope and scrabble towards the beyond, an orange light bathes the set like a petroleum sunset and the mushrooms take on a cold blue hue that quite ravished my senses. At the end the performers curl like plants and the mushrooms descend among them again as though inducing them into a cosmic sleep.

With an accessibly ambient electronic score by Takashi Kako, and luxurious white satin robes alternating with dark distressed gowns, Sankai Juku’s mysticism was, however, more Lord of the Rings than a Japanese Heart of Darkness. I read the myths before the show of how the original butoh was much more raw and grotesque and did shocking things with live chickens. And although not untouched by Kagemi’s contemplative vibes, I did feel a perverse itch for something a bit more visceral.