MANCC Entrypoint: Kota Yamazaki, Work-in-Progress Showing

MANCC is pleased to welcome choreographer, Kota Yamazaki into residence to develop “Part 2: I or Hallucination” of his “Darkness Odyssey” trilogy, which explores the idea of the body as black hole, absorbing all that it encounters.

Utilizing the Japanese somatic practice of Noguchi Taiso, a process of absorbing and filtering the encounters of the body, Yamazaki will work with the writings of seminal French thinkers, Deleuze and Guattari, butoh artist Tatsumi Hijikata’s “dance of darkness,” and Japanese goze music as source material.

Part 2 combines dance, philosophy, and folklore to portray our ever-changing internal landscapes and illuminate the fluidity of our identities. Japanese goze music, which are folk songs played on the Shamisen, a three-string Japanese banjo, will be a component of the work. Historically, women born blind in the Goze region were trained in this musical idiom, and it became known as the music of their hardships, spirit, and life.

While at MANCC, Yamazaki will experiment with a scenic design that covers the entire stage in silver material. Master lighting designer Thomas Dunn will develop a lighting plot that creates illusionary dark layers to represent the world of the goze musicians.

The residency will culminate in a work-in-progress showing in Montgomery Hall’s Black Box Studio on Thursday, November 16th, at 6pm. To reserve a seat RSVP to info@mancc.org.

“Darkness Odyssey, Part 2: I or Hallucination” will premiere at the Baryshnikov Art Center in New York City on December 15, 2017.