Kyoto Experiment Spring 2021

The Kyoto Experiment (KEX) performing arts festival is marking the beginning of a new era. Not only does it have three new program directors at the helm, it also has a fresh logo and renewed focus on experimentation to boot.

Learning to linger: on memory & migration in Eiko Otake’s movement art

Paper given at the Contemporary Japanese Theatre Workshop,  Deutsches Institut für Japanstudien, in Tokyo, July 27, 2019. This paper is part of a larger research project, co-conducted with Mika Eglinton, called “Japanese Women on the Move: Migration, Memory and Gender in Contemporary Performance.” The project draws on in-depth interviews with internationally renowned practitioners from Japan…

Dance in Asia 2018 – A radical retelling of the Tale of Genji

This article was originally published in the Japan Times newspaper on February 20 2018. How do you make a thousand-year-old story resonate with an audience in Osaka today? Tell them that you plan to radically modernize one of the most famous literary works ever to come out of Japan to fit present concerns. The centerpiece…

Dance, Kobe – Dance!

This article was originally published in the Japan Times newspaper on Feb 12 2014. Whatever springs to mind when you think of Kobe, it’s unlikely to be dance. Yet, from the fourth floor of a nondescript building in the port city’s multiethnic district of Shin-Nagata there shines forth a veritable beacon called Dance Box. Founded…