After a couple of days taking in the scenic wonders of Nagano — including a breathtaking night viewing of the cherry blossoms at Ueda Castle, the one-of-a-kind octagonal pagoda of Bessho Onsen, and the famed Snow Monkey onsen — I took the Shinkansen down along Lake Biwa to Kyoto where the Kyotographie international photography festival was taking place. I’ll cover that in future articles.

On my first night in Kyoto, I attended FOUR DANCERS vol281 at UrBANGUILD, a cafe/bar and multidisciplinary performance space in the heart of Kyoto. Like an old-school club on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, it’s dark, grungy, and covered in flyers. UrBANGUILD presents a wide variety of younger and older artists and draws an extremely diverse audience as well, making it a beloved oasis for contemporary and experimental performing artists in the otherwise more traditional and conservative-minded Kyoto. 

Nearly all the artists I met on this trip were new to me, yet many had worked with artists I knew personally. The experimental/contemporary art scene extends in all directions:  geographically, thematically, and stylistically. And it’s not exactly a small world, but I find that it’s extremely interconnected. Artists, like bees, are constantly exploring and often travel, seeking audiences and inspiration. Art, if it resonates, cross-fertilizes cultures in ways that may not be evident unless you’re looking for those influences.

I came to this program to see two artists in particular whom I had heard about but never seen perform, Chizuko Kotani / 小谷ちず子 and Miwako Inagaki / 稲垣美輪子. I’d met Chizuko many years ago in NYC and found that dancer/choreographer Takemi Kitamura, whom I had presented once in NYC, had studied with her in Osaka. My translator for the evening, Akiko Furukawa, a dance colleague who had once lived in NYC, had worked with Miwako previously.

Although I wasn’t familiar with the other two acts on the program, I learned that they also had interesting connections and stories. Luan Banzai is from Brazil but has lately been living in Kyoto. Better known for creating animation and visual art, here he mixed ruminative movement elements — sitting and thinking, reclining, posing theatrically — with startlingly frenetic dance sequences in a long solo that repeatedly surprised and delighted the audience. On this night, a diverse group of foreigners came to support him, which I take as evidence of the existence of a sub-community of foreign artists in Kyoto.

The fourth piece on the program was offered by the duo of Haruna Ueno / 植野 晴菜 and Riryong Ko / 高梨玲. They first met last year at Yukio Suzuki’s dance creation workshop in Matsuyama, Japan, and they became intrigued by how they might bring their disparate dance styles together. Not only their dance training but their upbringing also had been completely different. Haruna told me that, if not for dance, they likely would never have crossed paths. In public discourse, artists are often lumped together as if they are all bohemian restaurant workers, except for a few celebrities. In fact, anyone at all can create, and artists come from every walk of life. Moreover, the arts bring people from all walks of life together.

Haruna and Riryong wondered, with so little common ground, what they could possibly produce if they collaborated, without one following the other. What might the result look like onstage? Could a fruitful and intimate, yet non-hierarchical and free relationship be possible? Could that situation itself be taken as the theme and expressed onstage?

Haruna was born and raised in Japan and studied ballet, musical theater, and double Dutch in her youth and then performing arts theory at university. After graduating, she participated in Dance Box‘s domestic dance study abroad program and participated in works by Kota Yamazaki (with whom I worked in NYC when I commissioned his wife, Mina Nishimura, in 2010), Zan Yamashita, Shintaro Hirahara, and Chie Ito, exposing her to a variety of contemporary, conceptual, and butoh-based somatic practices. More recently, Haruna has studied with butoh artist Masami Yurabe (as has Miwako Inagaki).

Riryong grew up studying Korean traditional dance, spent her high school years in New Zealand, and then, in college, discovered Gaga, a contemporary dance technique created by Batsheva Dance Company Artistic Director Ohad Naharin. Rather than using a particular vocabulary of movements and body shapes, Gaga uses instructions and images to guide dancers to experience a heightened sensory awareness and understanding of their bodies. Riryong was so taken with it that she traveled to Israel where Batsheva is based to further her studies.

In their duet, Riryong and Haruna gave themselves the same tasks but not the same choreography. Each carried out the tasks in different ways or at different times and moved according to their individual styles and habits, allowing their differences to be visible to the audience. Nevertheless, there were times when they seemed to influence one another and become more connected. I feel they succeeded in expressing intimacy while maintaining independence. While time constraints do not allow me to write more about their work here, I will say that the presence of these three artists on the bill made for a varied and engaging evening.

Miwako Inagaki’s piece, “Room,” was a structured improvisation centered on the idea that she always feels trapped within the metaphorical “room” of the self and wants to break out. She said that each time she prepares to perform a new piece, “a storm is sure to come.” Her emotions begin to go up and down like a roller coaster as she struggles to create. 

The process of creation makes her hyper-aware of always being “in the room that is me. I am wrapped, confined, healed, sleeping, and dreaming.” Yet, there is always the possibility that new inspiration will enter her mind and reshape her work and even her sense of self. “At the end of the day, I remember what happened that day, think of tomorrow, and fall asleep while being engulfed in a vortex of memories. I wonder how my room will be transformed. Will a me that is not me, a you that is not you, a place that is nowhere… appear?”

I asked her if she ever felt that she did break through, and she said yes, many times on the stage. What is the key to doing it? “Facing yourself.” A teacher can lead you, “but you have to listen to yourself.” You have to recognize it for yourself.

Since 2013, Miwako has been studying with and sometimes performing with butoh artist Masami Yurabe, a founding member of the seminal Butoh group Tōhōya-Sōkai who has been making his own work for more than 40 years. Miwako goes to his lovely studio, which can also be a performing space, three times a week to work privately with him or take his small-group classes. 

She works part-time at a home next door to his studio, helping to care for people with disabilities. Besides being very convenient, this job requires her to be mentally present and work with various obstacles to communication and movement, which complements her work as a dance artist. Any resistance within her own mind becomes obvious, helping her to face herself and grow. 

Growth is her goal—growth as a dancer, an artist, and a human being. She faces herself on stage and creates and shares work that explores, through movement and presence, the fundamental questions of who I am, why I am here, what might I become, and what might come through me. By doing so, Miwako invites audiences to face themselves and find their own answers.