Dance performance in Cirkulacija 2 /Ajdovščina subway Ljubljana/

Monday, 3rd June 2024 at 8pm

SUMISH AND ATSUKO DANCE …

Choreography and dance: Masayuki Sumi and Atsuko Wada

Voice: Barbara Thun
Music: Marko Košnik

Zoyd, Null Dance and…

The challenge developed during preparations for the show, in an emergency rehearsal space without a video projector: will Masayuki be able to relate to the live video interpretation by interaction, or will I only be able to interpret his action without his direct response? After hopeless attempts we were left with a five-hour conversation before the performance, in which we managed to work out the concept and were surprised to to discover we were both interested in a rather rare kind of a craft: conceptual development of an improvisational system. This passion drove our collaboration into future, but seven years had to pass, until 2006, before we managed to put together an international co-production over distance. This time we took a whole month to rehearse in the dance studio Atsuko and Masayuki built next to their own house in Kobe. And in the blink of an eye, 18 years have passed since the tour that we started in Kobe and continued in Maribor and Berlin, where the singer Barbara Thun joined us in action.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSlaGoGBrU0

The performance “Sumish and Atsuko Dance …” is a kind of opposite of the concept of group improvisation. The couple have shared experience in mutual synchronization, but they will be faced with a half-hour composition composed for them, recorded in advance, without a single joint rehearsal or prior knowledge of the material. They will hear it for the first time on the drive from the main Slovene airport to Ljubljana – and we agreed to realize their visit to Slovenia only two months before that. Maybe being separated during preparations for the show, hanging only on memories and ideas about each other, will help us to strain and expose those cultural differences, which we are too eager to merge into a common pot of unification, and emphasize us in finding a balance between misunderstandings and oppositions. Or to say it another way: the difference between (Western) contemporary dance, ritual Noh theater and the logic of the Pythagorean monochord can perhaps be compared to Kosovel’s: “Joyful, dynamic, relative, we look at life from the distance of death,” and Masayuki’s: “We are always all in the same room and at same time.”

Marko Košnik
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Masayuki Sumi (Sumish) – b. 1946, Saga, Japan, after completing his law studies at Chuo University, he devoted his life to dance. His teachers were Kazuo Kamizawa, Katushi Izumi, Mariko Sanjo and Akiko Houki.
Between 1982 – 90 he led the Zaza Dance Forum and in 1990 founded his dance and production unit Dance Camp Project in Kobe, which he upgraded after 2005 with the project “Sumish Dance Company”. He collaborates with many dance, music and polymedia artists, including: Yasuhiro Otani, Masayuki Akamatsu, Yumiko Tanaka, Futoshi Moriyama, Kosei Yamamoto, Yoshihiro Kawasaki, Shunichiro Hisada… and steadily develops a motion-sound improvisation system called Zoyd.
In addition to many performances in Japan, he tours in Europe, Asia and America.
Today, Masayuki also works as the head of the “Spiritual Movement Lab”.
He is the winner of the “Encouragement Award” and the grand prize of the “Saitama International Creative Dance Competition”.
https://www.facebook.com/sumishdance

Atsuko Wada, b. 1947, Kobe, Japan, began practicing classical ballet at age six and started perforing in her twenties. She participated in dance pieces supported by the Japan Contemporary Dance Association and eventually developed her own unique approach. She performed in the lead role on the European tour of dance master Akiko Hoki in 1985.
She runs Studio Dancecourt Kobe, works as a choreographer, lectures about her work and conducts dance workshops in Korea.

Barbara Thun – b. 1964, Braunschweig, Germany, studied classical singing and experimental music at the Art Academy in Berlin. Since 1992 she worked as a singer and performer in contemporary music and musical theater. She performed solo and as a member of the group “maulwerker“ in theaters and festivals in Germany and on international scene. Her compositions were performed in Berlin theaters and concert places like Deutsches Theater and BKA, and on several festivals in Germany, Chech Republic and Spain. She received stipendium for Composition from the Senat of Berlin and an award for her composition life work from the city of Munich. Since 2003 her main devotion are improvised voice pieces, as shown for instance at the „Literaturfest München“ and in several cooperations with polymedia artist Marko Kosnik. She also studied medicine and nowadays works in a psychiatric hospital in Germany.

Marko Košnik, b. 1961, Kranj, Slovenia, has been working as a polymedia artist since the early 1980s. He composes electroacoustic music, develops synesthetic instruments for direct handling of sound and digital video, directs and produces performances, from solo to group, builds poetic platforms and installations, which he expands with social and technological envelopes, all the way to interactive environments, which he prefers to program handwritten.
Since 1986, he has realized 71 productions with the Egon March Institute, of which 29 are international, with over thirty project collaborators.

Project implementation: Egon March Institute and Studio Dancecourt Kobe
Location co-producer: Cirkulacija 2
Thanks: Urška Kristina Škerl, Tatiana Kocmur, Marko Batista, Borut Savski

foto: Tatiana Kocmur