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Azumabashi Dance Crossing

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Organized by Keisuke Sakurai, author of Nishazabu Dance Kyoushitsu, which is called the bible of Japan's contemporary dance, Azumabashi Dance Crossing is the event that showcases everything of the state-of-the-art phenomena in Japan's contemporary dance, starting with key figures such as Ko Murobushi and Mika Kurosawa to the stars of this decade Mikuni Yanaihara (Nibroll) and Masako Yasumoto, and also agressively showcases works of up and coming artists such as Huhoudou, Zakuro Yamaga and Pink. Azumabashi doesn't stop there and pushes the boundaries by introducing artists from other fields such as KATHY, Bokudesu, and Shintai Hyogen Circle from the visual art, and chelfich and Chiten from theatre, and even covers groups who mainly play in the fields of music and warai (gags).
If people may feel that contemporay dance is hard to understand, this event is a good introductoin to it. Like the latest best hits album of contemporary dance, it introduces you to the essence of avant-garde, cutting edge expression in a machine gun assortment of short pieces on the forefront of Japan’s avant-garse performing arts. It's fun.

"Dance as an art that evolves from kiche" by Midori Matsui, an art critic

For the first time in a long time the Azumabashi Dance Crossing showed us the joy of seeing something new being born from where there was hardly any shape. Showcasing eight groups of young choreographers and dancers selected by Keisuke Sakurai, this event was hot with the ambition of constructing a new structure of dance using as ingredients the kiche of Japanese mass culture or meaningless gestures which must have evolved from small children's play.
There we could see emersing a new form of "creation from periphery," reminscent of butoh of Tasumi Hijikata who made dance in the 60s from "negative" actions such as to tremble or to fall down, and imprinted onto his own body the unknown in the depth of human existence. One of the eight artists, Masako Yasumoto, spurted beer from her mouth onto a parasol held by a man in the center stage—there was this subversion of power structure of male-female clearly visible. She now started spining with energy and elasticity of spurting water, and it was like a painting on stage that she was drawing with the bodies, creating forms from no meaning, which could be called neo-butoh. And when the second performance of Shintai Hyogen Circle, joined by Ikuyo Kuroda of the Batik Dance Company, ended with embracing one another to the soundtrack of Give Peace A Chance by John Lennon, I felt the power of dance art in the heat of the young bodies rising from beneath the mechanical quality of their "subhuman" movements, with evanescence and fragility of the body revealed to shine.

Azumabashi Dance Crossing Website

http://azumabashi-dx.net/

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