Dears

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

2020 Creation – play for 6 performers

Working from letters she asked the dancers to write to the ones who left, Kaori Ito invites our ghosts on the stage. Dancing to speak to the dead, say goodbye to them and forgive the living.
Delphine Lanson summons each letter as a ritual for the hereafter. The six performers live through their strong relationships with the absents by their intense and unique dances. They are like floating spirits in between two worlds.
Dancers magnetise and repel each other inevitably until they form a whole of humanity that speaks about the invisible and keeps on living irresistibly.

I think you knew. And it’s as if I could still feel the vibrancy of your presence. Still today. I wish I’d known the man you would have become. But I like that memory of you being forever young. It’s as if you had chosen this because you didn’t really feel you belonged to this world.

Delphine Lanson

CAST AND CREATIVES

Time length : 1h

Artistic direction and choreography: Kaori Ito

Script: Kaori Ito, Delphine Lanson and the performers
Artistic collaboration: Gabriel Wong

For 6 performers in alternation : Morgane Bonis, Marvin Clech, Jon Debande, Noémie Ettlin, Nicolas Garsault, Louis Gillard, Delphine Lanson, Issue Park, Léonore Zurflüh

Composition: François Caffenne
Aid to dramaturgy : Taïcyr Fadel
Production: Améla Alihodzic, Coralie Guibert, Laura Terrieux and Anne Vion

Acknowledgments: Carlo Bourguignon, Arno Veirat, Lazslo Gabuka-Lanson, Stéphane Batut, Céline Dartanian, Altan Zul, Benjamin Minimum, Noemie Ettlin, Yoshi Oïda, the participants of the La Parole nochère project for entrusting us with their letters, as well as to Wajdi Mouawad and the Théâtre de la Colline team for their complicity.

Production : Compagnie Himé

Coproductions : Klap – maison pour la danse MARSEILLE, Mac de CRETEIL, Centquatre PARIS, Les Halles de Schaerbeek BRUXELLES BELGIQUE, L’Avant-scène COGNAC, Théâtre du Fil de l’eau PANTIN, L’Agora BOULAZAC, MA scène nationale MONTBELIARD, Le Théâtre Garonne TOULOUSE, Théâtre de SAINT-QUENTIN-EN-YVELINES, scène nationale, Le PLAT TOYOHASHI JAPON (en cours)…

With the support of the Caisse des Dépôts sponsorship.