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Saturday, June 26 & Sunday, June 27 at 8 pm
Croatian National Theatre , Trg mar¹ala Tita 15
KIM ITOH + GLORIOUS FUTURE TOKYO, JAPAN
I Want To Hold You
Kim Itoh is considered one of the most celebrated
representatives of the Japanese post-butoh generation. Although he
started his career in 1990 dancing butoh with Anzu Furukawa and the
Tokyo group Dance Butter he founded the company Glorious Future with
which he created numerous shows (Dead and Alive - Body On The
Borderline, ANATA, Boys and Girls, Screaming Garden) and participated at prestigious
European and American festivals. Accompanied by critical acclaim
he received the Shuji Terayama award for choreography at the First
Ashai Performing Arts Prize and Internationales de Seine Saint-Denis.
His work is sometimes close to pure performance; using public spaces
Itoh insists on a concept that lets the body move through daily scenography
such as stairs. In December last year he presented his new piece
Gekijouyen where uses the whole theatre space including the foyer
- the spectator watches the performer’s dance in a sitting area constructed
at the stage.
Kim Itoh's work concentrates on expressing isolation. His dance language
struggels against simple interpretations and that's why he can
reach to those far places where light becomes substance.
The show I Want To Hold You touches upon happiness and the difficulty
of relating to others. Its structure consists of two parts: Kim Itoh’s
solo followed by a performance of eight dancers. The show starts
with eight bells hanging low over the stage floor reflecting cones
of light. Kim Itoh throws himself dramatically into one of these
cones. He lies in foetal position, crawls around, frees himself and
looks into the light, his motions resemble reluctance of an animal.
He looks like he struggles against something that tears his heart
or falls apart by inner cognition.
In this dance he alternates thirst for the strokes of disappointment
and resignation. He is desperate and consolatory, exaggerated and
clear. His motions are at once butoh-slow-motion and an explosion
of rapid, sharp movements resembling martial arts, big city hip-hop
and electronic boogie.
From the centre of the stage he is pushed away with the stiff leg
of a dancer brought on the stage by the technical crew. This is the
beginning of the second part of I Want To Hold You. Seven dancers brought onto the stage sleeping, wake up from the stiffness and gradually
restore to life. Researching the space with simplicity, they are
in obvious contrast to Itoh’s complicated dance composition. Two
incompatible worlds are crossing. Itoh is breaking himself with the
music of Arvo Pärt which flows quietly over the stage, and the feeling
of isolation is more accentuated than in the first solo.
Gradually it becomes clear that they are trying to reach a mutual
contact. They fight to hold each other, but as soon as they come
in contact, they throw themselves away from each other. The women
are jumping into the power of lights which suddenly and brutally
sends them to the floor. Humbleness and love are not within reach,
but at the end eight dancers finally finish in a consoling embrace.
Simultaneously, Kim Itoh remains isolated, stuck, deeply concentrated
on the last cone of light with which he becomes one.
This glorious outsider creates a piece completely devoted to the
description of a man who searches to reach a light in an unusually
intense way, physicaly as well as symbolically.
http://www.jpan.org/dance/itokim/index-e.html
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