Animal

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

Dancing with the living

a Théâtre du Centaure production

It is the meeting of the choreographic universe of Kaori ITO with the quest for Centaur by Manolo.

Bare stage, everything in sight
Like a large caravanserai, backstage, stables, warming up, care and feeding of the horses. Everything is in sight. Nothing is hidden.
Music and bodies dialogue for an animal word that is both wild and sacred.
To be with the animal a single being to dance with all nature united.
In counterpoint to the collapse of biodiversity, it is a cry of urgency, a cry of alliance.
9 on stage
To express the attempt at reunion and the quest for symbiosis, it takes several people to pursue, dodge and tame each other, 5 humans, musicians, dancers, body and movement artists, 4 powerful, mysterious, singular black horses.

Creation performed in theater and in full nature in daylight.

All ages from 7 years old | Duration 1h

ANIMAL

Creation de Kaori Ito et Manolo
Choreography and direction Kaori Ito

Centaur in mutation Manolo
4 black horses Indra, Arjuna, Nakula et Sahadeva
Electric guitar Virgile Abela
Tabla, singing and harmonium Anwar Khan
Performer Léonore Zurflüh
Equestrian artist Johanna Houe

Creation Lights Anaïs Silmar et Olivier Guerbois
Assistant of Choreography Louis Gillard
Technical direction Sylvain Vassas-Cherel
Sound Philippe Boinon
Lights Anaïs Silmar

Daily work and care of the horses Séverine Deperrois et Malorie Leclerc

Production Théâtre du Centaure
Matthieu Paris, Charlotte Grunspan et Dominique Raybaud

Coproduction and residency
Archaos, pôle national des arts du cirque Méditerranée, Le Grand R, scène nationale La Roche-sur-Yon, Château Rouge, scène conventionnée d’Annemasse, Le Haras national d’Hennebont, pôle de création des arts équestres, Le Grand Théâtre de Provence, Aix-en-Provence, le Centquatre – Paris, La Communauté d’Agglomération Mont-Saint-Michel Normandie, Cultura Nova, Heerlen, Pays-Bas.

Support and pre-purchases
Haras national de La Vendée, Lycée agricole de Contamine sur Arve, MC2 Grenoble – Maison de la culture, Théâtre Quai 9 Lanester