Plexus

Kaori Ito

Steeped in Japanese culture and trained as a dancer in the West, Kaori Ito developed a hybrid and unique vocabulary that’s very much like her. At the junction of cultures and languages, she’s interested in the unsaid and the invisible. Close to Tanztheater, she grounds her work in her life story and that of the performers to prompt an intimate need to be on stage. Relying on the intelligence of the body, she seeks immediacy and instinct as the mainspring of action. From essential themes such as taboos, the end of the world, death, love, loneliness, she generates raw and spontaneous texts. These blunt, sharp words trigger the necessary, swift and wild movement she’s looking for. She shapes a body that gets empty to receive the emotions of the audience. This allows her to access a textual and choreographic vocabulary emerging from the inside and questioning us about our animality and our humanity.

“What I strive for in my work is to animate space. I try to give life to the empty space around me. It is somehow like the approach of a puppeteer. There is something interesting in the idea of manipulation. I try to discover who is pulling the strings, which element attracts the other… There is a sort of continuous spiral in which we don’t know who does what, and that’s what is interesting. I try to totally empty myself, so that people can project things. I’m not trying to guide them. I believe that it’s not my brain thinking when I dance, it’s my body expressing itself. So I’ll try not to convey a message that’s too intellectual.”

“Theatre is a confession, every night it is life that begins and ends.”

Creations

2020 Dears
with Marvin Clech, Jon Debande, Nicolas Garsault, Louis Gillard, Delphine Lanson, Leonore Zurfluh
Creation at KLAP Maison pour la danse in Marseille
in October 2020

2020 The Silk Drum
With Yoshi Oïda and Makoto Yabuki / Text by Jean-Claude Carrière
Executive production by the Maison de la Culture d’Amiens
Creation for the 2020 Avignon Festival

2019 Wachtraum (Daydream)
Commission from the Chemnitz Ballet as part of France Dance Germany

2018 Is it worth to save us?
Duet with Miraï Moriyama
Creation at KAAT in Kanagawa Japan as part of Japonismes 2018

2018 Robot, eternal love
Solo by Kaori Ito
Creation at KLAP Maison pour la danse in Marseille

2017 Fire me up
Spoken and danced confidences by Kaori Ito and Théo Touvet
Creation for the Antigel festival in Geneva

2016 ¿Puedo Flotar?
Commission from the BANCH Chilean National Ballet

2015 Je danse parce que je me méfie des mots
Duet with her father

2013 Asobi
Commission from the Ballets C de la B – Alain Platel

2010 Island of no memories
Creation for the (Re)connaissance contest, first place.
This show was chosen for the Modul-Dance program by the EDN (European Dance Network)

2009 Solos
Creation at the Théâtre Le Merlan – scène nationale de Marseille
Recreation at the Lyon 2012 biennial

2008 Noctiluque
Creation at the Théâtre de Vidy- Lausanne

COLLABORATIONS

2014 La religieuse à la fraise
with Olivier Martin-Salvan
as part of Sujets à vif of the Avignon Festival

2012 Plexus
by Aurélien Bory for Kaori Ito

FILM DIRECTION

2004 Carbon Monoxide
This film was screened at the Pompidou Centre in Paris and at several festivals in the US.

2006 Niccolini
With James Thiérée, Damien Jalet and Niklas Ek

2006 The sea is calm
with Zaratiana Randriananatenalina

Aurélien Bory for Kaori Ito (2012 creation)

Plexus comes from late Latin and means “interlacing”. In its later atomic definition, it takes the sense of “a network of vessels or nerves”. This word designates at the same time the internal mechanics of muscular movements, nerve impulses and oxygenated blood, and the external mechanics of dance, interlacing of gestures, movements, bodies or parts of the body.

For the second times, I wanted to do the portrait of a woman, not as one would do in painting, photography or literature, much superior arts in this exercise, but by using the body and space as unique prisms. And dance as the first perspective.

Aurélien Bory

Cast and production

Conception, scenography and stage direction Aurélien Bory
with Kaori Ito

Choreography Aurélien Bory , Kaori Ito
Music Joan Cambon
Lighting Arno Veyrat
Stage and manipulation Tristan Baudoin
Sound system Stéphane Ley
Costumes Sylvie Marcucci
Aid to dramaturgy Taïcyr Fadel
Set technical conception Pierre Dequivre
Set making Atelier de la fiancée du pirate
Prototype Pierre Gosselin
Machinery Marc Bizet
General management Arno Veyrat
Sound control Stéphane Ley
Lighting desk Arno Veyrat or Carole China
Stage management Tristan Baudoin or François Saintemarie
Assistant manager Florence Meurisse
Production Marie Reculon
Communication and public relation Sarah Poirot
International development Barbara Suthoff
Press Dorothée Duplan and Flore Guiraud with the help of Eva Dias (Plan Bey)

Production:
compagnie 111- Aurélien Bory
Contact : Florence Meurisse – florencemeurisse@cie111.com

Coproduction Le Grand T théâtre de Loire Atlantique – Nantes, Théâtre Vidy – Lausanne, Théâtre de la Ville – Paris, Le Parvis scène nationale Tarbes Pyrénées, Les Théâtres de la Ville de Luxembourg, La Coursive scène nationale – La Rochelle, Agora pôle national des arts du cirque – Boulazac

Residency and rehearsals Le Grand T théâtre de Loire Atlantique – Nantes, Théâtre Garonne scène européenne – Toulouse, Théâtre Vidy – Lausanne

With the help of l’Usine scène conventionnée pour les arts de la rue – Tournefeuille Toulouse Métropole