Japanese avant-garde choreographer and multimedia artist Hiroaki Umeda is a one-man show. The 32-year-old choreographs, produces the score, creates the videos, designs the lighting and dances in his pieces, which combine classical ballet with elements of hip-hop, street dance and Butoh theater. All he needs is himself, his computer and a space to perform.
His work is both sparse, yet radical, ranging from the subtlest of movements to violent reflexive jerks, echoing both his electronic scores and the simple linear images projected behind him. Most of the time he barely moves, spatially that is, from the center point of the stage. Yet within the small space that he creates can be found an entire universe, just the way a photograph captures an image of a specific time and place.
The reference to photography is perhaps deliberate, given that Umeda, whose father was a photo-journalist, started out studying photography at Nihon University. He has said he quit after about a year because he wasn’t interested in maintaining a photographer’s objectivity — he wanted to find an art form that would allow him to be more expressive.
A lack of a dance background proved to be no hindrance, though he has said he felt his lack of a “dancer’s body” was. However, he had been an athlete, playing soccer through junior high and high school, which must have made the focus on the physicality of movement easier. He took a variety of classes at the PAS dance school — ballet, jazz, hip-hop, African movement, Merce Cunningham — but again felt these weren’t for him. He still wanted something different.
In the end, he decided he had to create for himself, working in his room with just his computer. He established his dance company, S20, in 2000 and within just two years was gaining critical attention and the notice of international dance festivals, starting with his piece While Going to a Condition, which he will perform, along with Accumulated Layout at the Experimental Theater for four shows this weekend.
WHAT: Hiroaki Umeda, While Going to a Condition
WHEN: Tonight and tomorrow at 7:30pm, tomorrow and
Sunday afternoon at 2:30pm
WHERE: Experimental Theater (國家戲劇院實驗劇場), 21-1
Zhongshan S Rd, Taipei City (台北市中山南路21-1號)
ADMISSION: Tickets are NT$500, available through
www.artsticket.com.tw or at the NTCH box office
In While Going to a Condition, a silhouetted Umeda appears in front of crackling screen of black-and-white graphics as his pulsating legs and body reflect the driving electronic beat of his score.
Accumulated Layout, as the name implies, builds upon a complicated construction of sounds, images and movements.
Umeda’s compact show may be the smallest, in terms of space, of the National Theater and Concert Hall’s 2009 World View Series on Japan, but it packs a punch that will keep Taipei’s dance and art world talking for months.
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