On Thursday 18 February 2016 at 7 pm the Theatre Institute in Warsaw (ul. Jazdów 1), will see the premiere of One, a butoh show by Atsushi Takenouchi, with live music by Hiroko Komiya. The event is part of the Japanese butoh masters ? presentations series held by the Pompka Foundation under the auspices of the Japanese Embassy in Poland.
After the show the organisers invites you to the opening of the exhibition of Waldemar Zdrojewski?s photographs of another production of Atsushi Takenouchi, Emotion Seed. To conclude the stay of Atsushi Takenouchi in Poland, there will be a screening of Ridden by Nature, a film featuring Atsushi Takenouchi, who will meet with the audience (21 February, Elektronik cinema). The film is the result of 10 years of collaboration between Kathi von Koerber and Atsushi Takenouchi. It is a film about humanity meeting the most extreme faces of nature. For the first time the audience has a chance to take part in such a direct dialogue of man and nature ? a purely sensual, non-verbal experience.
In a short comment on the show, the artist writes:
Melting Horizon,
earth and sky became one.
One flower is born.
We are one.
Mountain and sea is one.
Wind and fire is one.
Day and night is one.
Darkness and light is one.
Life and death is one.
You and I are one.
One drop of water, gathering million time, become one mother sea.
We all come from this one mother.
The mother give birth flowers as gift of life.
Life and death, this endless cycle of celebration, generation to next generation, keeps on creating flowers infinitely over million years.
Those Each flower gift is your life as one flower.
Dance is one drop of water,
as a pure one flower.
Thousand flowers fall down from star as previous generation spirit?s love and tear.
Dance make celebration for all those life & death, night & day, darkness & light, sky & earth, fire & wind, sea & mountain, also you & I, all of us.
Dance makes all those become ?one?.
Dance is the celebration for all those marriage.
Dance is one flower.
The oneness of spirit, body and mind in dance engages the audience in a boundless and timeless journey to the universal source of being. During the show the artist?s slim body radiates an energy that permeates the audience, and the impression of experiencing a live picture is enhanced by the lights and unique music that brings to mind the sounds of nature. The ability to translate a full range of human emotions into the minimalist yet impressive language of butoh is a skill that only masters can develop over years of deep and personal exploration. Atsushi Takenouchi is one of them.
More on Jinen Butoh Workshops on 17 and 19-21 February 2016
?The foundation has been interested in butoh for years. We hold workshops and shows, and with the support of the Institute of Music and Dance and the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, we have published the book Świat butoh Kazuo Ohno (Kazuo Ohno’s World: From Without & Within). Atsushi Takenouchi is the third artist invited under the programme, after Yukio Waguri and Yoshito Ohno, the book?s co-author?, says Anita Zdrojewska, the event?s organizer.
The Japanese butoh masters ? presentations series is a unique opportunity for anyone seeking interesting phenomena in culture and arts. It presents butoh – a counterculture form of dance created in Japan in the late 1950s by Tatsumi Hijikata (1928-1986) and Kazuo Ohno (1906-2010). As Prof. Dariusz Kosiński writes, butoh is not only a distinctive style of dance, a contemporary performative genre or a certain type of training; it is a holistic approach combing a unique method of work, aesthetics, dramaturgy and philosophy. Formed by blending the traditions and inspirations of the East and the West, and still open to the intentions of creators, it is an extraordinary reflection of the complexity of contemporary global culture, at the same time offering ways of overstepping its limitations.
Atsushi Takenouchi joined Hoppo-Butoh-ha in Hokkaido in 1980. His last performance with the company, Takazashiki (1984) was created by butoh founder Tatsumi Hijikata. Atsushi started his own Jinen butoh in 1986 and created solo works Itteki and Ginkan, combining the universal picture of nature, the Earth, ancient times, impressions of the moment, meetings with people and environment. He went on a three-year Jinen project tour of Japan, with 600 improvisations in 1996?1999. At that time he was a student of Kazuo Ohno and his son Yoshito Ohno. Since 2002, he has stayed mainly in Europe, collaborating with dancers and actors from France, Poland, the United States and other countries. He has staged his solos at the Avignon Festival, Paris Butoh Festival and NY Butoh Festival. Over that time, he has also collaborated on films. Ridden by Nature, an environmental art film shot in Alaska and Hawaii, won the Best of the Fest award at the Martinique International Film Festival and an official selection for the Venice Film Festival.
Hiroko Komiya transforms the images born in the air and the surrounding space or created by the body, into sounds without a regular melodic line or rhythm. They are completely simple, single, ever present, like the weather or closest environment. She uses water and natural materials such as stone, bamboo, sand, leaves and shells, as well as bells, drums and percussion. She started to study percussion instruments used in traditional Hindu music in 1996, under tabla player Masahiro Besso. In 1999 she began to work with butoh dancer Atsushi Takenouchi. During Jinen Butoh workshops she will interact with the participants? breath and movement. She composes music for dancers and actors, and for workshops with children and adults with special needs in Japan, France, United States and Poland. She uses voice in its basic, natural form. In 2002 she began to collaborate with the tribal singer, poet and percussion player Jean C. Dussin on Inuit, African, Celtic and circle songs.
Tickets:
regular PLN 50, discount PLN 20
Buy online at Eventim.pl
Tickets available from Prospero Bookshop
Reservations:
tel. 791 877 377
Zbigniew Raszewski Theatre Institute