How do we experience presence?
Performing Arts follows dance, theater, performance art, and interdisciplinary works that unfold through movement, presence, and encounter. These articles explore what happens when ideas become embodied and when artists invite audiences into shared experiences of vulnerability, ritual, and transformation.
I became the sole child member of a Sufi whirling group. I was introduced to “Sama,” a word that translates to “listening” and, in my experience, involves the redirection of attention to achieve deeper connection.
In a season marked by a surge of Asian-led theater in New York, director and playwright Tara Nyingyè is carving out her own luminous path. As part of a new generation building not only productions but institutions, she and her collaborators are reshaping what contemporary theater can look and feel like — urgent, embodied, and unmistakably alive.
Photo © by Pol Guillard, L’Art Rue-Dream City 2025At the Aichi Triennale 2025, one experience stood out as a shared highlight for our group of thirteen: Bird by the brother-and-sister team Selma and Sofiane Ouissi. Doves make no effort to “collaborate” or to “create a good work.” For this reason, Sofiane must have needed a radically different reconstruction of bodily context than in dancing solo or with another human. That was what I wanted to witness.
Photo © by Christopher PelhamMy encounter with the well-known — but new to me — pianist Hitomi Nishiyama 西山瞳 at SUB Jazz Cafe, a seminal jazz club in Osaka, took me to places I never expected. Although she was playing jazz standards with a makeshift band, her music and career, characterized by curious changes in direction and exquisite elaborations on connections previously unrecognized, set us free.
Photo © by Christopher PelhamOn 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. I came to see two artists in particular, Chizuko Kotani / 小谷ちず子 and Miwako Inagaki / 稲垣美輪子.
