Japanese Double Bill of American Premieres at the Pillow
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| Photo's Courtesy of Jacob’s Pillow |
This specially produced engagement celebrates the range, diversity, and inventiveness of Japanese contemporary dance and dance-theater. Natural Dance Theatre and Ko & Edge Company are both widely recognized in Japan and Europe for introducing audiences to contemporary, progressive dance. Ko Murobushi, choreographer and artistic director of Ko & Edge Company, is a master of the Butoh style, a radical departure from the dance that preceded it. Mako Kawano, Natural Dance Theatre’s featured soloist who took part in founding the company, is known for her unique identity as a Japanese contemporary dancer and her refusal to adhere to traditional genres.
Executive Director of Jacob’s Pillow, Ella Baff comments, “I thought it would be interesting to show two completely different companies and styles from Japan. In fact, some of the most beautiful, imaginative, and unimaginable dance in the world has come from Japan. It is rare for these two companies to be performing on a shared program, and the artistic directors are master artists in their very individual ways. This engagement promises to be a one-of-a-kind experience.”
Alice manipulates the line between fantasy and reality. Huge, corrugated tin walls move throughout the work, characters appear and disappear, humorous and strange things happen, rousing the audience’s imagination of the world beyond the walls. Choreographer Nakamura was inspired by his childhood experience in the post-World War II era as the Japanese living environment changed as rapidly as the economy developed. The empty lot where he used to play was suddenly enclosed with corrugated walls one day. Alice explores both sides of the wall – childhood on one side and the imagined future on the other. The title derives from Lewis Carroll’s “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” and refers to the work’s manipulation of fantasy and reality.
Alice has enjoyed a 12-year run all over Europe and Asia, and Nakamura received an award from the Japanese Agency for Cultural Affairs in 2006 for the achievement. The work premiered in 1995 in the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Space and in 1998, it was performed at New National Theater Tokyo and won first place in “The Years Best Work by Japanese Artist” by the Ongaku Shimbun-sha (Music Journal).
Natural Dance Theatre was founded in 1991 by choreographer and director, Shinji Nakamura. The company has toured extensively throughout Europe and Asia, and its members have been presented by the Japan Society of New York. Nakamura began his dance career in Japan and graduated from Maurice Bejart’s famous school, Mudra in Brussels, Belgium in 1984, joining the contemporary company, l’Ensemble in 1985. After returning to Japan, he founded Natural Dance Theatre, distinguishing himself as an innovative contemporary choreographer. He was awarded the Best Dancer Award from Contemporary Dance Association of Japan, the Muramatsu Award in 1995, the Takaya Eguchi Award in 2000, and the Minister of Education’s Art Encouragement Prize in 2006. The Jacob’s Pillow performance will mark the first time Natural Dance Theatre has performed together as a company in the U.S.
Dead 1 premiered in 2006 in Asahi Art Square in Tokyo, Japan. The work will be presented at Jacob’s Pillow for the first time in the U.S. Dead 1 opens in darkness to the music of Purple Haze by Jimi Hendrix. As the lights gradually come up, three dancers are revealed balancing on their shoulders. As a Butoh-inspired work, the movement is minimal, drawing the audience in to view every breath and every muscle of the dancers. The program contains partial nudity.
Founded in 2003, Ko & Edge Company continues to open the minds of audiences through the work of choreographer and artistic director, Ko Murobushi. Murobushi is an
acclaimed Butoh artist and is recognized in Japan as a leading inheritor of Tatsumi Hijikata’s original version of Butoh, having studied with Hijikata in 1968. After touring Europe and Asia as a solo artist and choreographer, Murobushi established both a male and female Butoh group, and toured with them in Europe and South America. In 2003, he established Ko & Edge Company with three young Japanese dancers.
Butoh was developed in the post WW II period, which challenged ideas about the very nature of life. Kazuo Ohno and Tatsumi Hijikata are credited with its founding, both trained in Western dance and in the German Neue Tanze tradition. They pioneered a new art form that they believed offered a way to overcome the distance between dance and the body, and between the body and the universe. They were convinced that the exploration of forbidden sexual passions could free the body from artifice, and drew inspiration from nature and from the imagination. Butoh has been defined as finding the beauty in the grotesque and in the darkness, and is a poetic and surreal dance language.
Jacob’s Pillow hosts a PillowTalk, What’s Happening in Japan, July 9 at 5 p.m. in Blake’s Barn with prominent dance producer and President of An Creative Inc., Mayumi Nagatoshi. In this free and open to the public discussion, Nagatoshi will discuss the contemporary dance scene in Japan in conjunction with Natural Dance Theatre and Ko & Edge Company. In addition, Natural Dance Theatre and Ko & Edge Company perform in a preview July 9 at 6:30 p.m. on the Marcia and Seymour Simon Performance Space. This special showing is free and open to the public. Members of both companies will lead a master class July 13 at 10:30 a.m., which is open to intermediate and advanced dancers for a nominal fee.
For more information on Jacob’s Pillow, Natural Dance Theatre, and Ko & Edge Company, visit www.jacobspillow.org.
