The catastrophic events in Japan this past week have shaken the members of Toronto-based, Japanese contemporary dance collective, Green Tea, but in typical show biz fashion, the group’s performances this weekend at the Winchester Street Theatre will go on.
“We don’t have family members in that part of the country,” says dancer/choreographer Hiroshi Miyamoto (above right, with Masumi Sato, left, and Keiko Ninomiya, centre), “but of course our hearts are with our countrymen and women. We will have a donation box in the lobby of the theatre and plan to donate the contributions to the Canadian Red Cross’s efforts in Japan.”
Two members of Green Tea travelling from Japan for this performance were already safely in Canada when the earthquake and Tsunami hit the Japanese coast late last week. The collective has come together to present Dai Don Den 3, the third in a series of dance collaborations that bridge Canada and Japan, as well as Eastern and Western music and dance styles.
A couple of weeks ago, I met Miyamoto, Ninomiya and Sato at the Artists’ Play Dance Studio on Dundas Street East where they were rehearsing a piece choreographed for them by Toronto’s Peter Chin. Called a Gain, the work is concerned with repetition and the idea that “if you want to gain or achieve something, you start at the beginning and find yourself repeating the action again and again until you get it right,” says Miyamoto.
In addition to the Chin piece, five of the group’s six members will perform short solo works that underscore the breadth of their dance influences, which are by no means restricted to Japan and Canada. Miyamoto, for instance, is trained in the Indian classical dance style known as Bharatanatyam, and Ninomiya has travelled to Bali several times where she is studying that country’s traditional dance forms.
“One of our mandates is to bridge or to make connection with other Japanese artists,” says Miyamoto. “For example this year we brought a dancer from Japan and we hired a Japanese graphic designer to do our publicity materials. Also, we want to be a bridge to Japan and invite artists from there to collaborate with us. And we want to collaborate with Canadian artists.”
To that end, dancer/choreographer Keiko Kitano has worked with multimedia artist Rick Thomson, saxophonist Daniel Schnee and artist Don Sinclair on her piece called Apoptosis: Ninomiya is collaborating with Toronto composer John Carnes on her contemporary version of a Balinese dance called Kebyar Gandrung.
Miyamoto says Toronto is the perfect locale for this kind of cross-cultural collaboration. “We are a multicultural city and there are so many other art forms from other countries available here, which gives me lots of stimulation for my creation.”
For a Gain, the dancers each gave choregrapher Peter Chin a small signature gesture (above) and the Japanese word, shoshin, which means back to basics.
But if the city is inspiring, it’s also expensive, observes the trio, each of whom works a part-time job in order to support their dance careers. Finding affordable rehearsal space is a constant challenge since most studios book in the $15 – $20 per hour range, which may not sound like a lot but those three and four hour blocks quickly add up to a financial burden.
Which partly explains why this is only Green Tea’s third collective performance since the first Dai Don Den in 2004.
“Each of us has been very busy working and travelling,” says Miyamoto, “some to Japan, some to Bali, some to India. We see this performance as an opportunity to celebrate our growth as artists since Dai Don Den 2 in 2006.”
WHERE/WHEN: Dai, Don, Den 3 at the Winchester Street Theatre (416.301.7543) March 18 – 20 (Friday and Saturday at 8 pm, matinees Saturday and Sunday at 2 pm); tickets $23, students/seniors $20.
Photos by Christopher Jones
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