The 19th International Festival of Contemporary Dance «Open Look 2017»
On June 29 – July 9, St. Petersburg and Moscow host the 19th International Festival of Modern Dance «Open Look 2017» where the Swiss dancers Foofwa D’Imobilité and Kaori Ito present the dance as a way to tell personal stories.
The Swiss program schedule:
Neopost Foofwa: «Condanced Histories»*
- July 1, 19.00: New stage of the Alexandrinsky Theater (St. Petersburg).
- July 3, 19.00: Meyerhold Center (Moscow).
* You can also see this performance in Kostroma at the season closing of the «STANTSIA» art space on June 24. More
Kaori Ito: «I Dance Because I Do Not Trust Words»
- July 1, 21.00: New stage of the Alexandrinsky Theater (St. Petersburg).
- July 4 19.00: Meyerhold Center (Moscow).
Kaori Ito was born in Tokyo. She studied classical ballet from the age of five. At age 20 she moved to the United States to become part of the dance section at Purchase College, New York. Having retuned to Japan, she was awarded a scholarship by the Japanese Government and returned to New York as part of an International Study Programme for artists. She studied at Alvin Ailey Dance Theater.
From 2003 to 2005, she held the main role for Philippe Decouflé’s Iris. She joined Ballet Preljocaj to work on les 4 saisons by Angelin Preljocaj. In 2006, she danced in Au revoirParapluie by James Thierrée and went on to collaborate with him on Raoul et Tabac Rouge. In2008, she assisted Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui for the film Le bruit des gens autor with Léa Drucker and worked with him once again as a soloist in Guy Cassiers’ opera House of the sleepingbeauties.
The same year, she made her first production Noctiluque at the Théâtre Vidy- Lausanne. In 2009, she presented her second piece Solos at the Merlan National Theater of Marseille. This piece was initially part of a residency in a festival in Japan, she then recreated it in the biennale de Lyon in 2012. Island of no memories , her third choreography, was created in 2010 as part of the (Re)connaissance competition, for which she won first prize. This performance was selected for the Modul-Dance programme of the EDN (European Dance Network), which supported the creation of her personal projects for two years.
In 2012, she co-choreographed with Aurelien Bory for Plexus created in November 2012 at the Théâtre Vidy-Lausanne. After dancing and workng with Alain Platel for Out of Context, Kaori Ito created her fourth show Asobi , produced by Les Ballets C de la B in 2013. In 2014, she created La religieuse à la fraise with Olivier Martin Salvan as part of the Sujets à Vif at the Avignon Festival and the Paris Quartier d’été Festival.
Artist polymorphous, she mades also videos (Carbon Monoxide-2004, The sea is calm-2006, Niccolini- 2008 with James Thierrée, Damien Jalet andNiklas Ek), paintings and she collaboredregularly at theater with including Edouard Baer and Denis Podalydès Le( Cas Jekyll 2, LeBourgeois Gentilhomme by Molière,L’homme qui se hait by Emanuel Bourdieu and Lucrèce Borgia by Victor Hugo) for the Comédie Française.
In 2015, she receives the awards Nouveau talent chorégraphie by SACD and she is recognized chevalier de l’ordre des Arts et des Lettres by french ministry.
I dance because I do not trust words
Duration: 1h
With: Kaori Ito (daughter) and Hiroshi Ito (father)
Text, Staging and choreography: Kaori Ito
Playwriting and support: Julien Mages
Stage design: Hiroshi Ito
Lighting: Arno Veyrat
Music: Joan Cambon
Costumes : Duc Siegenthaler (Haute École d’Art et de Design de Genève)
Coaching actor: Jean-Yves Ruf
Coaching vocal:Alexis Gfeller
Production : Améla Alihodzic (Playtime) et Thierry Tordjman (T&T Productions)
Kaori Ito about the performance:
This project will deal with the relationship between a father and daughter. I want to recreate a meeting with my father, to retrieve something which is lost. A personal and artistic meeting, the meeting of two people separated by thousands of miles and by a sort of cultural distance.
Perhaps the purpose of this show is the dance that we’ll do together, once said what can be said by words. Because in Japan, we do not trust words.
Dancer with the Stuttgart Ballet and the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, Foofwa d’Imobilité starts his career as a choreographer in 1998 in New York and founds the Neopost Foofwa Company in Geneva in 2000. Since then he puts his body and mind at the service of creations where the human, the generous, the authentic prevail over aesthetics. He associates with many artists, claims an anarchic practice in creating, and his collaboration with the scenographer and lighting designer Jonathan O’Hear is the best example of it.
«Condanced Hisories»
Concept, text and performance: Foofwa d’Imobilité
Light: Jonathan O’Hear
Production: Cie Neopost Foofwa
Support Developped in collaboration with the mediation platform of AVDC and Reso – Dance Network Switzerland, with the support of Pro Helvetia in the frame of the cultural mediation programme.
A choreographic and pedagogical one man show about his/stories of dance. The wonderful world of 20th century dance is packed with illustrious names, such as Loïe Fuller, Rudolf Laban, Mary Wigman, Michel Fokine, Mister B., Martha Graham, Merce Cunningham, Yvonne Rainer, Trisha Brown, Pina Bausch. If this is too much information for you to digest, don’t panic! Help is at hand. This new version, created with the light artist Jonathan O’Hear, subtitled A choreographic and pedagogical one man show about his/stories of dance, demonstrates how certain choreographic trends have helped to shape contemporary art. Bursting with anecdotes, which serve as a timely reminder that dance is as old as humanity itself, Foofwa d’Imobilité rumbustiously decodes the myriad forms of dance that have been created over the last 125 years and that are still being used today. He quite literally walks the talk by singing the music himself, describing the costumes and stage design and proving that the history of dance is alive and kicking.
