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

Is it worth to save us ?

With Kaori Ito and Miraï Moriyama (November 2018 creation)

Kaori Ito keeps searching for what makes the essence of humanity. Intuitively addressing this universal question through her personal connection to it, she explores her relationship with Miraï Moriyama, somehow an inverted reflection of her. Together, they perceive in Mishima’s work, this shared feeling of being extra-terrestrials in observation in the world in which they evolve. Switching from a personal and fusional relationship to a cold and estranged connection, they use distance to even better laugh at themselves, and laugh at us.

We will not reveal in which delusional fantasy the performance degenerates into, between Max Sennett, Michael Jackson and musicals of the roaring twenties, but like all the fantasies and dramas of Kaori Ito, if she comes back around here, we must not miss “Is-it Worth to Save Us?” or any of her sweet madness.

Jean Barak

cast and creatives

Time Length : 50min

Stage direction : Kaori Ito

Choreography and text: Kaori Ito and Mirai Moriyama

Freely inspired by A Beautiful Star from Yukio Mishima

Collaboration on choreography : Gabriel Wong
Costumes : Aurore Thibout
Lighting and technical direction : Arno Veyrat
Composition : Joan Cambon
Sound design : Adrien Maury
Production : Améla Alihodzic, Coralie Guibert, Laura Terrieux and Anne Vion.

Acknowledgment : Sarah Benoliel, Soutarou Fujii, Estelle Castagnoli, Meg Boury and Ayin de Sola for the perfumes

As part of Japonismes 2018 with the Fondation du Japon

Production : Himé Company

Coproductions : Mac de Creteil, Kanagawa Arts Theatre（KAAT)

Support : Monthelon Castle