Contemporary Dance Performance ?
We’re Gonna Go Dancing!!

4 Japanese 1 Malaysian leading contemporary works!

The Japan Foundation (JFKL) and Japan Contemporary Dance Network (JCDN) proudly presents We’re Gonna Go Dancing!!?, one of the main projects for JCDN will tour to five cities in four countries -Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia), Bangkok (Thailand), Manila (the Philippines), Solo and Jakarta (Indonesia).

We? re Gonna Go Dancing!! will introduce widely ranged 4 Japanese and 1 Malaysian contemporary dance works to audiences to witness their extraordinary talents. The audiences can experience variety and possibility of physical expression.

Japan Contemporary Dance Network (JCDN), a non-profit organization, was founded in Kyoto in 2001, aiming to act as a bridge between the art of dance and society at large. JCDN organizes various types of programs to encourage the flowering of dance within society, connecting dance artists, dance organizations, art foundations, venues, critics, and so on.

JCDN Tour Project has started in 2000 with eight artists touring four cities in Japan. It keeps growing, and last year they toured 21 cities with 40 artists. Together with organizers in each city, they have succeeded to create a new exciting movement of contemporary dance in Japan.

This project aims of creating a sustainable dance network to enable the communication between artists, organizers, and artists and organizers. It is an opportunity for dance practitioners to stimulate each other and also for audience to meet new contemporary dance.

This event is organized by The Japan Foundation, Kuala Lumpur (JFKL) and Japan Contemporary Dance Network (JCDN), with the support from Agency for Cultural Affairs, Japan.

JCDN URL: http://www.jcdn.org
: http://odoriniasia.jugem.jp/

As a part of ?We?re Gonna Go Dancing!!,? Ko Murobushi Butoh Workshop will be held as follows:

Date & Time: 9 (Thu) August 2007, 7pm-10pm
Venue: Central Market Annexe
Admission: RM10, RM5 (by donation)
Reservation: please call to JFKL 03-21612104

Would you like to come to ?Dance Meeting??
Date & Time: 12 (Sun) August 2007, 2pm-5pm
Venue: JFKL Office, Suite 30.01, Level 30, Menara Citibank, Jalan Ampang, KL
Admission: FREE
Contact: Mr. Shimada 012-213 5381

We would like to have an opportunity for choreographers, dancers, theater producers, dance schools, critics and everybody who is interested in dance to get together and share our issues, thoughts and any ideas for dance. We are hoping to find some new ways of facing the issues and actual proposal to create better infrastructures for dance. We would also like to exchange information of what is going on currently in Japanese and Malaysian contemporary dance scene.
If you are involved in dance in any small scale, you cannot miss this chance. Let?s talk about the future of dance, and what dance can do for the future.

We are very much looking forward to meeting there.

Date & Time: 10 (Fri) August 2007 @ 8:30pm
11 (Sat) August 2007 @ 1pm
Venue: The Actors Studio@BSC
Level 3, West Wing, Bangsar Shopping Centre
Ticket: RM30, RM15 (JFKL Members, Students, Disabled & Senior Citizens)
available at The Actors Studio@BSC box office 03-2094 0400

For further enquiries, please contact JFKL at 03-2161 2104 or e-mail to jpcc@jfkl.org.my

Artists? Profile Titles of the Performance

(1) Ko&Edge Co.

Choreographer, Ko Murobushi, is one of the most prominent names of Butoh in Japan, who have started his career as dancer/choreographer from 1970s. Although he has long career as dancer/choreographer, is still aggressive and dangerous on stage.

In 2003, Ko Murobushi settled his unit Ko&Edge Co. with 3 young Japanese dancers, presented [Handsome Blue Sky] in ?JADE2003 Hijikata Memorial? in Japan, and caught frantic applause. Since 2004, this unit Ko&Edge Co. has been presenting new series titled [Experimental Body]. [Handsome Blue Sky] made successful tour in US-Canada (5 venues), Korea in 2005, and Tunisia in 2006. A new short piece [Dead 1] performed 8 major cities in Japan in 2006. His choreographies as well as his solo performances continue to establish Ko Murobushi as one of the highest reputed representatives of Butoh, and every moment Ko challenges to reach new possibility of Butoh.

Title: “DEAD 1”
[Choreographer ? Director] Ko Murobushi
[Dancer] Ko Murobushi, Daiji Meguro, Yukio Suzuki

It was Nietzsche, who said, ?Dance while standing on your head?.

One day Meguro stood on his shoulders and waved his legs back and forth. ?Corpse is dancing,? I said.

If it is true that there is nothing that is not dance, then there must be a dance that is not dance. There is a dance that lives between what is and isn?t dance, but it is not dance.

What exists is movement as yet encountered. It is a miracle of movement, fragile and fleeting as a dream? Ko Murobushi

(2) Shintai Hyogen Circle

Formed in 2002 by the students majoring sculpture at an art college in Hiroshima, Japan. With Yutaka Joraku in a pivotal role, Shintai Hyogen circle fluidly changes ensemble members in respopnse to the conditions of the performance site. Beginning with one-off performances at Hiroshima City University parties, Shintai Hyougen circle was formed by Yutaka Joraku in 2002 after a process of trial and error in search of a pure avenue of physical expression. Has since participated in numerous dance competitions. Joraku always collaborates with other dancers in their performances that feature almost-humorous movements and gestures by physically throwing themselves at each other or through group gymnastic-like physical entanglement. It is Shintai Hyougen circle?s lack of facial expression ? their performances which, though physical, do not convey any sense of physicality ? that makes this collective so original. Has recently participated in ?Contemporary Dance in Shinsekai? (Osaka), ?Toyota Choreography Award 2004 ? NEXTAGE (Next Stage, Next Age)? (Tokyo) and ?Azumabashi Dance Crossing? (Tokyo).

Title: “To Norichan” 
[Choreographer] Yutaka Joraku
[Dancer] Yutaka Joraku, Masato Takeuchi

This is a challenge to something like dance by those who are rather fond of moving their bodies. Diamond in the rough performance by a pair of sculptor wanna be boys. They are not playing around, but not seriously in love yet?

(3) Ho Ho-Do

In 2001, 155cm-tall dance duo ?Ho Ho-Do? was formed by Mika Arashiki and Mari Fukutome. Their work is created through their delicate sensitivities and impulses they feel in everyday life. They adapt not only ordinary dance techniques but also small, and some might say trivial gestures from daily life, as motifs of movement to create pieces showing their poetic world-view.

In recent years, their work pieces were nominated to the final screenings of the main dance competitions in Japan, and they won the Keralino Sandrovich (Japanese director and musician) Award in the ?Tokyo Competition #1?, 2004, and the Audience Award given as the ?TOYOTA CHOREOGRAPHY AWARD? in 2005. Currently, they are contract artists of ST Spot (Theater of Yokohama City).

In 2005 they also participated in the opening commemoration performance in the commemorative ceremony of Kichijoji Theatre, Korea-Japan Dance Festival in Seoul Korea, in the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography dance project exhibition ?Japanese Contemporary Dance Media 2005?, and in a dance-tour project in various performance spaces throughout Japan, called ?We?re Gonna Go Dancing!!? (Fukuoka, Yamaguchi, Ritto, Sasebo), etc.
In addition, they choreographed a play, called KERA?MAP #3 (Tokyo) and for a TV drama. They also are visiting teachers in the Yokohama City junior high school.

Title: “How to Move Forward to the North-northeast”
[Choreographer ?Dancer] Mika Arashiki, Mari Fukutome

This piece has been showed in 11 cities in Japan and abroad. Ho Ho-Do uses the wind blowing from a huge running fan as a motif to show a collection of continuous small dance like moments. The piece keeps evolving every time it is performed.

(4) Masako YASUMOTO

As a dancer, YASUMOTO has made the most of any chance to dance, whether on stage, television or runway, and was chosen as the best performer at the Internet Drama Award 2003. Being active as a choreographer, she has been involved in theater productions directed by MATSUO Suzuki, promotion videos of ASA-CHANG & JUNRAY, and Ketsumeishi?s live concerts. YASUMOTO creates her own works once in a while, which has resulted in winning the National Advisory Panel Award at the former Rencontres Choreographiques Internationales de Seine-Saint-Denis, and the outstanding performance award in the dance section at Tokyo Competition, both in 2004.

Title: ?NAHANAHA?
[Choreographer ?Dancer] Masako Yasumoto

Violation is OK, royal road is OK. Talk to me ?more, more.? Look with your tongue hanging out.

MALAYSIA

(5) Amy Len

Artistic Director of Youth Studio Of Dance and Kwang Tung Dance Troupe. Amy won the BEST PERFORMER in the 4th Annual BOH Cameronian Arts Awards.Currently, she is a full time choreographer, dance instructor and dancer.

Title: WALL
[Choreographer] Amy Len
[Dancer] Amy Len, Tan Bee Hung, Foong Siew Ching

Digging deep into the darkness, these shall be some hidden stories waiting to be restored.

(6) A. Aris A. Kadir

Participated in numerous international dance festivals in Singapore, Thailand, China, Indonesia and France while a dancer with Yayasan Warisan Johore. He was awarded the Best Dance Student Award in 2001, APPEX Scholarship Award 2004, University of California, USA, Indonesia Arts Award 2005, Cameronian Arts Awards 2003 ? Best Group Performance, Best Choreographer 2006. Aris is currently lecturer at ASWARA.

Title: Berinai

To view the programme booklet, click here.