(glowing)

This work for six dancers combined butoh (a Japanese dance form that embraces shadows and darkness) with traditional African dance and contemporary movement, exploring similarities between these forms. Dancers from Senegal and Ethiopia joined Japanese butoh dancers and US contemporary performers to create a scenario in which lightless vision ignites the imagination, conjuring illusion and upturning the ordinary between the shadows. Within a set designed following principles found in the traditional Japanese house, bodies emerge, float, and then disappear into the shadows of a dimly lit architecture. In (glowing), Kota Yamazaki draws inspiration from the great modern writer Jun’ichir Tanizaki’s essay In’ei Raisan (In Praise of Shadows), which plumbs the unique Japanese aesthetics of shadows and darkness.

Quote Unquote was an interdisciplinary series presenting work by artists that use an existing text as a departure point for time-based works including installation, film, and performance.