{"id":2061,"date":"2018-09-25T12:48:37","date_gmt":"2018-09-25T03:48:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/realtokyo.co.jp\/_sys2024\/en\/?p=2061"},"modified":"2018-09-26T00:02:24","modified_gmt":"2018-09-25T15:02:24","slug":"cross-transit-vox-soil-project","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/realtokyo.co.jp\/en\/performance\/cross-transit-vox-soil-project\/","title":{"rendered":"Akiko Kitamura Cross Transit \u201cvox soil\u201d project
Chofu City Sengawa Theater, 2018.3.28-30<\/small>"},"content":{"rendered":"

photo: Hiroyasu Daido <\/small><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Over the past ten-odd years, choreographer\/dancer Akiko Kitamura has been leading a variety of projects in several Asian countries. She launched the collaborative international dance project \u201cCross Transit\u201d in 2015 subsequent to her research in countries across Asia, where she encountered likeminded artists from Cambodia, Burma, India, Indonesia, Thailand and Nepal. Following works realized in Indonesia and Cambodia, this time it was the overwhelming combination of power and pathos in the Indian traditional \u201cLai Haraoba\u201d festival music she encountered in Manipur that fascinated and inspired Kitamura to invite musician Mayanglambam Mangangsana as a dramaturge for her newest piece. This new, further developed version of \u201dvox soil,\u201d which I witnessed last spring at Sengawa Theater, will be unveiled at Kanagawa Arts Theatre (KAAT) in October. The title is supposed to express the idea of voices and rhythms beating in sync like the pulse of the earth itself.<\/p>\n

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photo: Hiroyasu Daido<\/small><\/p>\n

Alternately appearing on the stage are a total of seven dancers (including Kitamura) with cultural roots in different Asian countries.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0The body language of their dance, responding to the vocal and instrumental performances of Mangangsanaand Yoshie Abe (from the group Kodo), is choreographed based on a profound understanding of the \u201cAsian physique,\u201d and revolves around movements of stomping, beating or kneading the ground \u2013 at times reminiscent of ritual or martial arts. In concert with the fast and forceful rhythms and sonorous singing, these body movements come across fierce and eloquent, but the performance eventually rings out in a kind of silence that feels rather reticent, and as abstract as flowing water.<\/p>\n

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photo: Hiroyasu Daido<\/small><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Several scenes feature two dancers entwined like two living beings that figure out the distance between them while testing each other\u2019s breath, and closing the gap between them without eye contact. Their communication is reminiscent of the behavior of wild animals trying to tame each other. In the second half, Kitamura and Abe appear in a scene that could best be described as a \u201cfight\u201d charged with the calm and composed excitement of a duel performed with cold, pointed knives. The piece\u2019s climax and highlight is defined by what I would call a \u201cgroup portrait\u201d much rather than a group dance by all performers, revealing a multilingual cobweb of \u201cconnections\u201d spread out in all directions in order to live. Secretly contained within it are whispered hints at a certain \u201canswer\u201d that Kimura found in her research in Asia, according to which she defines dance as \u201can act of connecting through the ground beneath our feet, and beyond ethnical, national and linguistic differences.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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photo: Hiroyasu Daido<\/small><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In recent years, countries across Asia have been walking in step in political and economical terms, and continue to play an important role in the international community. Also culturally, exchange is progressing from a modern point of view, however the aim is not homogenization. What is supposed to be created here is a tapestry embellished with cultural roots that are inherited through regional music and physical behavior, a fusion that is multilayered yet at once structured like an air-permeable net. This is one ambitious work that illustrates Akiko Kitamura\u2019s own vision of the \u201cfuture of Asia.\u201d<\/p>\n

Translated by Andreas Stuhlmann<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"photo: Hiroyasu Daido   Over the past ten-odd years, choreographer\/dancer Akiko Kitamura has been leading […]","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":2062,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[82],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/realtokyo.co.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2061"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/realtokyo.co.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/realtokyo.co.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/realtokyo.co.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/realtokyo.co.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2061"}],"version-history":[{"count":31,"href":"https:\/\/realtokyo.co.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2061\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2119,"href":"https:\/\/realtokyo.co.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2061\/revisions\/2119"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/realtokyo.co.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2062"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/realtokyo.co.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2061"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/realtokyo.co.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2061"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/realtokyo.co.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2061"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}