2024 Season Launch Party
Contemporary Dance
May 17, PS21 Pavilion Theater
6:00 pm: PS21 Members Only Dinner Party
8:00 PM: Beyond Ballet, Beyond Hip-Hop, a double-bill performance: The Dying Swan and Its Cause of Death and Encounter
Beyond Ballet, Beyond Hip-Hop (Japan)
The Dying Swan and Its Cause of Death and Encounter (a double bill)
Tickets:
$35 (performance only)
$250 (dinner party and performance)
Become a PS21 member at the $250 level or higher and be our guest at the season-opening evening: Enjoy a locally-made bento box dinner and a wine bar, followed by Toshiki Okada’s The Dying Swan and Its Cause of Death performed by celebrated ballerina Hana Sakai, to Saint-Saëns’ Le Cygne, and Encounter, with choreography by Moto Takahashi for MWMW, her all-woman dance company.
Join by May 10 to reserve your spots for the dinner party and the performance, plus enjoy access to the many benefits of PS21 membership. Already a $250+ member or higher? Look out for a promo code in your email to receive your 100% discount! Contact info@ps21chatham.org if you haven’t received your code.
General admission to the performance of The Dying Swan and Its Cause of Death and Encounter is $35.
ABOUT BEYOND BALLET, BEYOND HIP-HOP:
A double bill.
Two genre-defying works that illustrate the groundbreaking directions of Japan’s current dance scene.
The Dying Swan and Its Cause of Death.
Celebrated Japanese ballerina Hana Sakai dances the timeless Fokine classic, then plunges into visionary playwright/director Toshiki Okada’s comic unraveling of the motif, plodding, wobbling, and musing aloud about why she, the swan, has to die and what it’s like to dance the part. Udai Shika accompanies with Saint-Saëns’ Le Cygne for solo cello in this hilarious mashup from chelfitsch Theater Company that also raises timely environmental issues.
With
Moto Takahashi’s all-woman dance group, MWMW, performing Encounter, challenging gender norms with their stunning hip-hop technique and ensemble movements.
Duration: 1 hour
Toshiki Okada
Toshiki Okada is a playwright, director and novelist. He is an innovator of form and a key figure in Japanese contemporary theater, and one of the world’s most recognized theater-makers of today. Born in Yokohama in 1973, he formed the theater company chelfitsch in 1997. Since then he has written and directed all of the company’s productions, employing a distinctive methodology for creating plays, and has come to be known for his use of “hyper-colloquial” Japanese and unique choreography.
In 2005, his play “Five Days in March” won the prestigious 49th Kishida Kunio Drama Award. He participated in Toyota Choreography Award 2005 with “Air Conditioner (Cooler)” (2005), garnering much attention. His collection of short stories titled “The End of the Special Time We Were Allowed” was published in February 2007 and awarded the Oe Kenzaburo Prize. He has been on the judging panel for the Kishida Kunio Drama Award since 2012. In 2013, his first book on theatrology was published by Kawade Shobo Shinsha. From 2016, he directed works in a repertory program at Münchner Kammerspiele, one of the foremost public theaters in Germany, for four consecutive seasons. “The Vacuum Cleaner” has been selected as one of the “ten remarkable productions” by Theatertreffen 2020, the German theater festival. In 2020, he won the 27th Yomiuri Theater Awards Selection Committee Special Prize with his Thai artists-collaboration piece “Pratthana – A Portrait of Possession,” which is an adaptation of a novel by Thai author Uthis Haemamool.In 2021, he won The Yomiuri Bungaku-sho (prize for literature) with “Unfulfilled Ghost and Monster – ZAHA / TSURUGA”.
Hana Sakai
Hana Sakai was born in Seattle, Washington, USA. She’s regarded to be one of Japan’s premier ballet dancers, with excellent technique and expression, enchants audiences with sophisticated performances. Currently a Honorable Dancer of the New National Theater Ballet Company as well as forming a contemporary dance unit Altneu with her partner Yasutake Shimaji. Her repertoire is diverse, including all the major classical full length ballets, as well as works of contemporary choreographers such as Nacho Duato, Marco Goecke and Christian Spuck.Sakai has received numerous prestigious prizes and awards, such as the Award from the Ministry of Education in the Art Encouragement Prizes in 2009, the 35th Nimura Dance Prize in 2015, Medal with Purple Ribbon in 2017 from the Japanese Government, and the Special Award from the 39th Akiko Tachibana Foundation Award in 2018.
Moto Takahashi
Moto Takahashi is a dancer, choreographer, videographer born in Nagano Prefecture. She started classical ballet from a young age, and since 2013 she has started her creative career in earnest, and her solo works have been invited to overseas festivals such as Rencontres Choregraphiques Internationales de Seine-Saint-Denis (Paris) and Festival Fabbrica Europa (Firenze). She presented “Phantom Mockument” at Yokohama Dance Collection 2021 [Competition I] and won the Jury Award and the Kinosaki International Art Center (KIAC) Award. She is also focusing on her own dance video works, and is expanding her range of activities as a videographer. MWMW / A dance company launched in 2017 by Moi Moi Moi dancer, choreographer, and videographer Moto Takahashi. Takahashi has created a dance company that condenses the expressions and techniques she has cultivated over the years, with the motto of alternative dance that is not bound by stereotypes, and which changes her form from time to time, and which is both high-level and artistic. aim. “ROBIN” co-written by MWnos, a unit with Von・nos, won the Grand Prix at the Kanagawa Short Drama Awards 2022.
The North American tour of Beyond Ballet, Beyond Hip-Hopis produced and organized by Japan Society, New York, NY. Beyond Ballet, Beyond Hip-Hop is supported by the Agency for Cultural Affairs, Government of Japan through the Japan Arts Council, Doug and Teresa Peterson, and The Harkness Foundation for Dance.
