PLEXUS
Aurélien Bory is a Toulouse-based choreographer working at the intersection of dance, circus and visual art. In Plexus, he encloses the Japanese dancer Kaori Ito in a forest of tensioned vertical cables. It’s as if she’s in a transparent cuboid cage. We can see her, but her image is blurred by the shimmer of Arno Veyrat’s lighting as it moves across the cables. Ito strains against these confines, writhing, flailing and hurling herself against the cables. Every sound is hugely amplified, so with her every movement we are assailed by a high-tensile jangling and groaning. At intervals she subjects her environment to furious challenge, racing backwards and forwards within the limited inner space so that the cage rocks on its axis. At other times she positions herself between the cables so that they bear her weight, and hangs there like an exhausted insect, faintly articulating her limbs.

Synchrometrics

Can we design future memories for the body?
Is the body itself the apparatus for remembering cultural processes?Prospectus For a Future Body proposes new perspectives on how the body remembers and invents technological narratives. Central to the project is the study of body movement in dance: How it can evolve, adapt or re-condition to possible futures?Eternal Summer Storm explores the concept of muscle memory transfer as an alternative form of interactive cultural continuities. This concept prototype speculates on a future digital library of body movements or dance techniques that can be experienced beyond the audio-visual conventions. Eternal Summer Storm attempts to recreate legendary Japanese dancer Tatsumi Hijikata’s Butoh dance choreography and experience in ‘A Summer Storm’ (1973) from archival footages.Bionic Movement Research is a collection of experiments on the process of designing digital muscle memory for the body. Inspired by Luigi Galvani discovery (1780) of animal electricity in the human body, these experiments appropriate the techniques of electrical nerve stimulation to choreograph artificial muscle contraction and body movement.

Hosotan

Hijikata conceived of Ankoku Butoh from its origins as an outlaw form of dance-art, and as constituting the negation of all existing forms of Japanese dance. Inspired by the criminality of the French novelist Jean Genet, Hijikata wrote manifestoes of his emergent dance form with such as titles as ‘To Prison’. His dance would be one of corporeal extremity and transmutation, driven by an obsession with death, and imbued with an implicit repudiation of contemporary society and media power. Many of his early works were inspired by figures of European literature such as the Marquis de Sade and the Comte de Lautréamont, as well as by the French Surrealist movement, which had exerted an immense influence on Japanese art and literature, and had led to the creation of an autonomous and influential Japanese variant of Surrealism, whose most prominent figure was the poet Shuzo Takiguchi, who perceived Ankoku Butoh as a distinctively ‘Surrealist’ dance-art form.

Median
When examining any living substance at a microscopic level, there are almost no perceivable boundaries between human and non-human bodies. In this work, Hiroaki Umeda, a Japanese choreographer, dancer and visual artist, pursues his longstanding belief and fascination that a human body is an intrinsic part of nature, where there is simply no distinction with other living things. For Umeda, choreography is not only limited to human bodies but for anything that is capable of movement. In MEDIAN, he explores the choreography of cells, molecular forms and organic synthesis, bringing into human visibility another world of movement, light and sound.

Odoshi Cloud Sequence
A symbiosis between nature and culture is created against the backdrop of the Japanese garden in the pond of the Amstelpark. This artwork explores new possibilities to generate sound and composition that are controlled by slow, unpredictable and unexpected elements of nature which are highly respected in Japanese culture. The diversity of natural sounds gives the work an almost meditative character, while the dependance on natural factors evoke a tension between longing and acceptance. This sound installation engages, as a natural sequencer, in a dialogue with the water, sun wind and clouds. It refers to Japanese garden culture by using the principle of the Japanese bamboo water tumbler.

discrete figures 2019

Human performers meet computer-generated bodies, calculated visualisations of movement meet flitting drones! Artificial intelligence and self-learning machines make this previously unseen palette of movement designs appear, designs that far transcend the boundaries of human articulateness, allowing for a deep glimpse into the abstract world of data processing. The Rhizomatiks Research team, led by Japanese artist, programmer, interaction designer and DJ Daito Manabe, gathers collective power with a number of experts, among them the five ELEVENPLAY dancers of choreographer MIKIKO as well as from coding artist Kyle McDonald. The result is a breathtaking, implemented beautifully, in short: visually stunning.

Dans 13 Tongues
Choreographer CHENG Tsung-lung has always been fascinated by his mother’s stories about “Thirteen Tongues”: the street artist and legendary storyteller from their neighbourhood in Taipei was known for being able to slip into various roles. With his full-length work, CHENG succeeds in becoming a modern “Thirteen Tongues” himself: He transforms Taoist rites, festive parades and the bustling street life of Taipei into a fantasy world, blurring the past and the present, the real and the surreal. Against a mysterious soundscape of Taiwanese sounds, Japanese Nakashi melodies and the electronic music of LIM Giong, the dancers stomp and tremble in ecstasy like enchanted shamans in an endless festival.

真鍋 大 度
Perfume

Perfume is Japan’s top techno-pop girl trio – Nocchi, Kashiyuka and Aa-Chan – whose music and synchronised dance sessions have won them a global online fan base. This year they have had their first sellout European tour. Their distinctive sound is the work of Japanese electronic music guru Yasatuka Nakata who has been their music producer since 2003. Their stunning performance at the Lions International Festival of Creativity at Cannes recently was the result of their collaboration with leading Japanese techno-artist Daito Manabe. Manabe is one of a new generation of programmers whose genre-crossing work has placed him at the cutting edge of techno-art-music-performance. His art embraces dynamic sensory programming, projection mapping and body capture; lasers, robots and sonar.

ILANIO REUBIN AND ELENA SLIVNYAK
SUPREME BEINGS FASHION SHOW

The Supreme Beings Fashion Show will reveal the avant-garde concepts of two local fashion designers, Ilanio Reubin of Ilanio and Elena Slivnyak of IIMUAHII, at the spacious SOMArts Cultural Center on Thursday, March 1st. The two runway shows will showcase 8 imaginative looks from each designer, as well as two short improvisational performances by Butoh (contemporary Japanese) dancers which we find very fitting for the two creatives.Though different in aesthetic, both designers hail from similar backgrounds and aim for analogous goals. Ilanio (San Francisco Art Institute) and Elena (Academy of Art) both found the retail and fashion corporate worlds too constrictive and mass-produced, and thus ventured into their own imaginative ones.
Ilanio works to create “visually stunning fashion concepts that explicitly disregard wearability, saleability, and practicality; that embrace advanced definitions of sexuality and gender; and that defy the commercially-mandated boundary between the fashion and art worlds.” For Elena of IIMUAHIII, her avant-garde aesthetic is manifested in an intricately-crafted sportswear line.Although we’re dreaming of being in Paris (but really, when are we not?), we’re excited to watch Ilanio and IIMUAHII strut and represent San Francisco’s undeniable talent in their nontraditional fashion show and hope to see you all there as well!

video

Wrecking Orchestra
Japanese most famous street dance crew WRECKING CREW ORCHESTRA brings you the full version of the glow suits performance.
Choreography lead by YOKOI (WRECKING CREW ORCHESTRA / ELECTRIC TROUBLE)