The National Theater and Concert Hall’s 2009 World View Series: Japan Only got off to a rousing start last weekend with Tadashi Suzuki’s company in the National Theater and Hiroaki Umeda upstairs in the Experimental Theater, providing theatergoers with the choice of a production by a master at the height of his art or a young avant-garde choreographer just beginning to make a name for himself. The contrast between the two could not have been starker, but both delivered mesmerizing performances that set a high standard for the rest of the series.
This weekend the main theater hosts the innovative Jo Kanamori, whose five-year-old dance company Noism has already won international recognition for its contemporary style and blending of European and Japanese aesthetics.
Kanamori, 35, began studying classical ballet as a child, first with his father Sei Kanamori and then at the Asami Maki Ballet school and company. He was the first Japanese dancer to study at Maurice Bejart’s Rudra Bejart Lausanne, where he became interested in choreographing. He danced with several companies in Europe, including the Nederlands Dans Theater II (ND2), the Lyon Opera Ballet and Gothenburg Ballet, while trying to create more dances of his own. Under the Marron Tree, premiered by the ND2 in January 1997, marked Kanamori’s debut as a “professional choreographer.”
In 2002, he decided to return to Japan and focus on choreographing. He became artistic director for the dance division of the Niigata City Performing Arts Center in 2004, and set up Noism in April that year as Japan’s first city-subsidized, resident dance company. NINA-materialize sacrifice, which premiered in November 2005, became the vehicle for Noism’s first international tour in 2007.
In NINA, Kanamori examines the eternal tug-of-war between men and women, control versus submission and the contrast between objectification and reality. Five women, clad in flesh-colored leotards, start off as inert mannequins, moved and posed by their handlers, five men dressed in business suits. But gradually the power dynamics shift and the women begin to assert themselves. The piece ends in an almost total role reversal.
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