HCMC – A Multimedia Dance/Theater Project

15 and 16 Sep 2011, 7.30 pm
Le Thanh Theater

From Japan Foundation Center for Cultural Exchange in Vietnam:
The Japan Foundation Center for Cultural Exchange in Vietnam, in cooperation with Arabesque Dance Company, proudly presents a multi-media dance/theatre project, “A flower” & “Chronicles of a soundless dream” on 15 & 16 September in Ho Chi Minh City. Their energetic and thought-provoking performances bring together contemporary dancers from Japan and Vietnam on one stage, to further explore the concept of human struggle, endurance, life, death and everything in between.

Mikuni Yanaihara & Keisuke Takahashi (Off-Nibroll, Japan) and Tiffany Chung (Vietnam/USA) were first brought together by Theatre Works Singapore for its 2007 edition of the Flying Circus Project. Both immediately felt a profound artistic connection with one another, and began to exchange ideas towards potential collaborative projects. The first result of this long-term process is an exhibition & performance entitled Fukawaga Shokudo, which was supported by Art Matters New York and Fukagawa Tokyo Modan Kan Gallery in early 2011.

This multi-media dance/theatre project is their second collaboration in which off-Nibroll’s and Tiffany Chung’s performance works will be presented to the Vietnamese audience for the first time.

Ticket

Free tickets are available at Galerie Quynh (65 De Tham, District 1, HCMC, 08-3836-8019) from Wed 7 Sep.

About the artists

Off-Nibroll
The visual director Keisuke Takahashi and choreographer Mikuni Yanaihara formed off-Nibroll which mostly deals with the relationship between body and image, in 2005. Their intention is to isolate dance from theater, and remove the barrier between audience and performers. They fulfill this idea by using a small gallery spaces to maintain a close distance with the audience, and, furthermore, to form their creation with the audiences’ existence.
To bring the new body into their work becomes a challenge, but it also releases the form of dance to a larger variety group of people.

Keisuke Takahashi
A visual artist, Takahashi is the visual director for Nibroll Company, an interdisciplinary arts collective. The Nibroll Company has created many video and performance pieces and has participated in arts festivals throughout Japan and the world. Takahashi, as a solo artist, has also created many visual installations and his work has been presented worldwide.  He received the MAM Contemporary Award from Mori Art Museum in 2004 as well as the Committee Recommendation Award from Japan Media Arts Festival in 2006. He also creates many TV and print ads for companies such as Adidas and FIFA, and produces many music videos as well.

Mikuni Yanaihara
Since high school, when she began to dance, Yanaihara has won numerous awards for her work, including the NHK Award at a national high school dance competition. After graduating from university with a degree in dance, Yanaihara turned her sights on film and enrolled in film school. Since creating Nibroll in 1997, Yanaihara has brought Nibroll to a range of festivals including the Oregon Dance Festival, the San Francisco Butoh Festival, and the Berlin Fusion Festival, earning great critical acclaim as a choreographer.

Tiffany Chung
One of Vietnam’s most prominent contemporary artists, Tiffany Chung is noted for her map drawings, sculptures, photographs, videos, and theatrical performance work that use a pop aesthetic to conjure hyperreal, candy-hued visions which reference both contemporary mass culture and the lingering resonances of historical trauma. Drawn to the process of transformation, Chung’s work examines urban development and questions the roots of society with its cultural memories and values. Exploring the pyschogeographies, her recent work interweaves specific historical events with spatial and sociopolitical changes to examine the complex relationship between site, map and memory. Showing her work in numerous group and solo exhibitions throughout Asia, Europe and the US, Chung’s work was recently featured in the Singapore Biennale 2011. In 2012, her work will be presented at the Asia Pacific Triennale 7 (Queensland, Australia); San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, USA; and the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas City, USA.

About the work “A flower”
Off-Nibroll’s artist statement:

Faced with the disaster 3.11, a plethora of lives were lost in Japan.

Meanwhile, we are struggling with the serious issues on energy and nuclear power plants. In this circumstance, we discussed with each other, and decided to create a new performance.

The keyword is – a flower.

There might be no direct link between this performance and the disaster we experienced, but we do think we cannot create a performance without thinking about our current situation after the disaster.

About the work “Chronicles of a soundless dream”

Synopsis: After the death of his grandparents, a young man from Tokyo comes across some intriguing tales of his father’s hometown, a tiny hamlet in the Chugoku region of Honshu Island. Through his grandmother’s old letters, the young man becomes increasingly fascinated with her stories and begins to explore his own country’s history.  Working as a dancer, he re-imagines life in Japan towards the end of 19^th century and early 20^th century through powerful choreographed movements and the mesmerizing sounds as described by his grandmother. As the man immerses himself in reinventing these narratives, he is taken on an emotional rollercoaster to revisit Japan’s glorious past and to learn about its decaying present.

Human struggle is always at the core of Tiffany Chung’s video and performance work. Using the body and its choreographed movements, her work reflects human loneliness, struggle and endurance when society drastically transforms itself. In her work, Tiffany Chung fabricates rural and urban environments that are sterile and empty, while still inhabited by human bodies or the absence of them. Intrigued and inspired by the complexity of Japan’s modern history, Chung’s new dance/theater performance attempts to examine the modern society against its historical backdrops and cultural memories, well beyond the context of Japan.