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

Robot, Eternal love

Solo by Kaori Ito (2018 Creation)

After dancing with her father and then with her life partner, and giving birth to a little boy, Kaori Ito is left facing herself and confronted with her constantly moving artist’s life. She discovers the very contemporary feeling that time is accelerating. Putting herself in the shoes of a robot who must learn everything about human behaviours to come to life allows her to stand back from mankind, to live at last in the present time, to be really alive on stage. She is finally alone to accept death and learn how to love what really makes the essence of human beings, their frailty.

teaser

Living as artists, we are very often on tour, travelling; our life seems very far from the idea of settling. We have very intense and very short encounters. We say hello and goodbye as in a series of little deaths. I often met the fear of being alone in this almost robotic way of life. Everything happened very fast and I felt like never having a rest.
After a while, I needed a time of emptiness, the time of emptiness evaporating the other times, the time of emptiness letting me think that maybe we can escape death. So I try to put myself in the shoes of an android imitating human behaviours by working on emptying my body. After giving birth to my child and living his delivery, I feel today that death and birth are closely related

KAORI ITO

distribution

Time length : 50min

With : Kaori Ito

Written, directed and choreographed : Kaori Ito
Collaboration in choreography : Gabriel Wong
Collaboration for the plastic universe : Erhard Stiefel and Aurore Thibout
Composition : Joan Cambon
Technical direction and lighting design : Arno Veyrat
Handling and stage management : Yann Ledebt
Sound design : Adrien Maury
External perspectives: Julien Mages, Zaven Paré (robotician), Jean-Yves Ruf,
Choreography Assistant : Chiharu Mamiya
Lighting control room : François Dareys, Thomas Dupeyron (alternating)
Sound control : Adrien Maury, Coline Honnons (alternating)
Set design : Pierre Dequivre, Delphine Houdas and Cyril Trupin
Production : Améla Alihodzic, Coralie Guibert, Laura Terrieux and Anne Vion

Acknowledgements : Sola Touvet Ito, Théo Touvet, Sarah Benoliel, Estelle Castagnoli, et Chiharu Mamiya

Production : Himé Company

Coproductions : ADC of Geneva- (Switzerland), KLAP – Maison pour la danse – Marseille, MA snational scene – Pays de Montbéliard, Lieu Unique – Nantes, Avant-scène – Cognac, Théâtre de Saint-Quentin-en–Yvelines – Sasakawa Foundation (JAPAN).

Supports : Flux Foundation in Genève (Switzerland), Compagnie 111 – Aurélien Bory / La Nouvelle Digue. Kaori Ito is the winner of the DanseAujourdhui award – dance audience network. As such, hes creative project is supported by dance patrons.

Teaser 3foisc / DanseAujourd'hui