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Dance of the soul - a blissful ending
Towards the end, little white confetti like snow start to fall, and suddenly the back wall falls down and opens up a vast darkness
like the gate leading to space… And at that moment the dancer sitting against the side wall, slowly lies down…
This last moment, was a moment where the dancer became one with the universe in pure stillness…
The first half of the piece a life is born from darkness, as if floating in the water, pleasantly melting with the surrounding air.
The fluidity in the movement seems so natural, that stillness seems to be an extreme unnaturalness. But this fluid movement turns
to an edgy vibrating movement together with exploding or metallic sound coming in. This expression was not just an interior
transformation, but the change of the quality of the body itself, and this way of dancing made one feel as if the surrounding
substances that the skin touches became something totally different. And beyond this materialized time, came the blissful
nothingness.
Thus Teshigawara transformed his body quality skillfully, erasing the body and reaching the dance of the soul. He approached
the ultimate form of dance, and created a magnificent epic of the human spirit. The lights and its colors created by himself was
exceptionally beautiful.
The Asahi 25/12/07 Kumiko Murayama
This is an abstract piece of great visual beauty... Aestheticism triumphs at each step. Speed, fluidity, extreme rigor... each
gesture has overwhelming force.... It is this fluctuation between violence and delicateness, this constant transition from one
atmosphere to the next, that creates an impact, hypnotizes the audience amazed by the troop's virtuosity.
Le Figaro 16-17/2/08 Marion Thébaud
Flawless in plastic art terms, physically intelligent, silent – aside from the moans of the dancers, this piece, balanced between
men and women, impartial, is a jewel. No need for a diamond, each tiny piece of glass reflects the light.
Liberation 16-17/2/08 Marie-Christine Vernay
Glass Tooth is a wonder, a finely cut diamond, a precious work: sparing in light but prolific in energy, Teshigawara's dance seems
to respond to unseen rules. Both fragmented and fluid, the movement is of dizzying speed... a dance that is simple,
essential,that breathes. Something both earthly and aerial: a magnificent show.
DNA-Dernieres Nouvelle d'Alsace Claudine Studer-Carrot
The dance and the poem of glass
Glass Tooth contains more poesy than its name can indicate. It is the start of a journey, not just for the creator but also for the
dancers, it is a universe of glass and incredible sound. Teshigawara’s dance is fluid without cease, and invites us to witness a
ceremony in which the body plays the main role, each in individual form, as if the muscles move without a fixed order, as if all
parts of the body have their own organization. He dances and draws in space. Only Saburo Teshigawara and the incredible and
exceptional Rihoko Sato dive into the pool of broken glass. They lie down, jump, and dance in it, as if there were no glass,
achieving a fabulous dance. The lighting design is one of the best we have seen in these days. No wonder he is also a plastic
artist. But please do not confuse, this is not a spectacle, it is dance, in one of its most poetic and most beautiful forms. One of the
most emotional moments was when the dancers create musical.Harmony between their movement and their own voice and echo.
Everything on stage is so poetic that the spectator becomes nearly hypnotized in front of what is with no doubt such a fine piece of
art.
ABC 24/2/08 Marta Carrasco
Driven to an extreme situation, the body, through hesitation gives out the most powerful and beautiful movements. The audience was deeply moved by the dance which was, so to speak, life itself.
The Yomiuri 26/12/06 Hideki Sukenari
The wonder of Teshigawara's work lies in the power of the performance not only created by the way of existence of the bodies,
but even by the shadows of the space that surrounds it. In his new piece "Glass Tooth", the texture of glass and the bodies
intertwine, surrounded by light and darkness . . .
. . . The duo by Saburo Teshigawara and Rihoko Sato leaves a striking impression. Especially when they become still, together
on the edge of balance, on the stage full of broken glass fragments, the contrast between the transparent inorganic glass
fragments and the organic bodies is unbelievably beautiful . . .
. . . The glass fragments seem like they are accepting the bodies of the dancers into it's diffused reflections. The bodies accepting
this foreign substance. Because of this ambivalence, even the slightest movement or the unrecognizable whispering sounds (by
the dancers) stand out so clearly. . .
A time and space restrained and the purest concentration continued.
The Asahi 25/12/06 Tatsuro Ishii
... A piece pure and mysterious, hypnotizing as a zen monochromatic ink painting.
Le Figaro 25/10/'96 By René Sirvin
The choreographer left his name on the history of a masterpiece with „Here to Here“. A masterpiece
unimaginably dense, that
draws the attention of the audience from beginning to end without making the
least concession. The audience was absolutely
enchanted to see such a perfect piece of work.
Le Nouvel Observateur 7-13/11/96 By R.G
A space also of concentration, which makes the hidden quality of things appear. “ Here to Here“ is a piece
built of nuances, which
breathe life into things.
Frankfurter Allegemeine Zeitung 21/1/95 By Edith Boxberger
Any elements of decoration,any kind of embellishment would seem unnecessary and moreover destroy the merciless glass like
beauty which allows for no touch, no eroticism,no exchange, but only a growing numbness.
Suddeusche Zeitung 24/1/95
Arely has one seen a stage of such suggestive power, rarely a performance casting such a mighty spell on the audience.
Hamburger Morgenpost 22/8/95 Isabelle Hoffman
Dance cannot be imagined to possess more concentration, reduction, yet highest aesthetic refinement. but can it still be called
dance? It is a ceremoniously sublime form of movements.
Hamburger Abendblatt 21/8/95
SABURO TESHIGAWARA "BLACK WATER", THE GLOBALISED REALM OF THE SENSES
Teshigawara Saburo with his latest creation, "Black Water", in Ferrara . . .
. . . What comes across instantly is the special quality of movement with which Teshigawara seems to sculpt space, and in sudden bursts becomes inextricably intertwined with what is now the post-modernity of an empire of globalised signs.
Il Manifesto 5/11/06 Gianni Manzella Ferrara
The first performance of the brand new Black Water show was held at the Civic Theatre in Ferrara for the Prime Visioni Festival . . .
. . .The event is dance. Ritualistic, fluent and elusive, it flows, without any solution of continuity or interior energy, setting and dominating visceral rhythms at will, diluting or concentrating them in an instant. The body becomes vibratile, starting first and foremost with the head, torso and arms: the facial expression is impenetrable and evocative, even when twisted into expressions reminiscent of certain types of Japanese iconography . . .
. . . With a sort of mobile perpetuity Black Water mesmerizes and captivates the audience, holding it spellbound, vigilant, open and ready to receive the deepest emotions through veritable osmotic action.
www.delteatro.it 31/10/06 Silvia Poletti
TESHIGAWARA: CAPTIVATING, MOVING AND SOMEWHAT DISTURBING
Words are superfluous when it comes to describing the beauty, emotion and sometimes veiled disturbance of the dance performed by Saburo Teshigawara, together with Key Miyata and Rihoko Sato, at the Civic Theatre . . .
. . . The trademark of the Japanese choreographer is essential in the purest sense of the word, that is to say not reduced to the bare minimum terms or the merely aesthetic: it is rather illuminated action, a chain reaction of celestial bodies, as though dance were an energy from an external source and space were imbued with it. Watching Teshigawara, it would appear that his balletic body needs to extend itself as much as possible so as to "receive" dance rather than generate it . . .
. . . A slithering creature (Rihoko Sato), both liquiform and animalesque at the same time, moves within this environment, and seems to give birth to the other two figures interpreted by Teshigawara and Miyata. At times the solo performances of the former are characterized by a poignant, painful note that releases a tremendous energy: this is his body undergoing metamorphosis, succumbing totally to the changes, as tiny as they are gargantuan, taking place around him. It is no exaggeration to say that Teshigawara blossoms with every instant of his dance, just as he dies with every instant of his dance, vibrant in every cell of his body, even in the tendons in his arms and his fingertips, which often provide the first musical chord of the movement . . .
This show captivated and won over the audience.
Il Resto Del Carlino 30/10/06 Monica Pavani
...And in the end the dancers convert themselves into what maybe called " liquid sculptures" with the mixture of the strength and smooth fluidity.
The quality of the movement and its beauty is undeniable.
La Vanguardia 28/1/06
The precision of the movement, and the work with lights, the perfect geometry of the stage, is miraculous.
...The excellent Rihoko Sato dances a splendid duet with Vaclav Kunes in the 2nd part, sharing the rhythm of punctual silence and whispers. Their interior voices never reaches the other, fading into solitude. Here Teshigawara's ability and talent reaches its best expression, with the only help of light and stage that changes its texture and feeling.
El Pais 26/1/06 by Octavi Martí
Disjointed bodies, pantomimes drawn out in infinite slowness, murmurs. Saburo Teshigawara’s choreographic world is one of murmurs, of cries and whispers.
A long, slow, magnificent love duo in a well of light that irradiates the dancers. Here, music has been evacuated. The only sounds are the rustling of feet, the breathing and panting. Bodies that talk, a polyphony of silences, sighs and pauses as we say in solfege.
After the murmurs, other loud cries, deafening sounds, devilish metallurgic poundings. And again the bodies in suspension, stopped in time, but still occupying space with an unsettling resourcefulness. Even alone, the dancer illuminates the stage.
Voix du Nord 21/1/06 by J-M. D.
Usually, in a Western context, when you sit down in a theatre watching a performance, you hold your breath, trying to concentrate on the dynamics of the dancers, who are probably keeping their bodies and breath as tense as yours, if the performance is emotionally demanding. "Scream and Whisper", however, the new creation by Saburo Teshigawara, premiered in Sala Petrossi in the Auditorium Parco della Musica in Rome, conveyed a very different and intense sensation – at certain moments you could feel your own breath flowing with the dancers'. And if you read the programme afterwards, you found that Teshigawara himself explains; "Scream and Whisper" is the "breathing of emotion", "the beating of the heart", "the flow of blood". To be honest, it's not exactly "normal" for the artists' intentions and the actual production to correspond. For that reason, it is a pleasure to see a whole company devoted to demonstrating, even living, the purpose in this piece.
It's starts with a solo in black by Kei Miyata, in the typical slow-quick alternation of rhythms favoured by Teshigawara, which then gives way to a section in which three girls in white and two boys with a touch of red in their costumes "walk" without changing the location on stage: a hypnotic, oriental, soft way of moving feet and arms, repeating a slow-motion set of steps over and over again, in unison with variations for some of the dancers.
Then comes a fantastic duo (by Rihoko Sato and Vaclav Kunes), a serpentine folding and unfolding of the two bodies, whispering and screeching, while the gestures of the couple suggest a kind of skin ripping – a perfect metaphor for the aggression and lust in any love relationship. After this magic moment, the whole company rushes in, in various colors, occupying the stage, shouting and enjoying their own dancing. Remarkably, the dancers have all, Japanese or not, incorporated the special quality Teshigawara’s "breathing movements:" Rihoko Sato, Azusa Yoshida, Chisato Ohno share with the slim Bruno Pere and the tall Vaclav Kunes an incredibly striking mastery of the body's internal and external workings. Add to that the lighting and electronic music, by Neil Spencer Griffiths; everything in this piece is refine and charming.
Ballettanz June 05 by Elisa Vaccarino
The light little by little introduces us to a mysterious atmosphere, and together with this amazing vertical stage set determines the dramatism and intensity of the scene. The dancers are figure of this tableux with such velocity thanks to the breathing technique of their creator.
…Saburo Teshigawara is said to be the world’s fastest dancer, but he must also be the man who knows most about how to stop a movement. For the dancers of KARAS are as breathtaking when they are statically still in the light, as they are when their arms are flying in the air with such speed.
…for it has succeeded in something rarely accomplished…To leave us emotional without words…
ABC (Spain) 24/10/05 by Marta Carrasco
In "KAZAHANA"… time can make an image melt into another, inducing to ambiguities of perception.
…It's by this means of this counterpoint that Teshigawara transforms time. And time for him is made of fragile limits between what is being formed and what is being transformed, between matter and memory, likeness and otherness, uniqueness and multiplicity. In this unique dance, so rich with effects and so sure of itself in its exquisiteness, an image of what is most brief and difficult to become fixed in life is formed little by little: the incorporeal and memorable image of each one of us.
Folha de Sao Paulo 02/08/05 by Ines Bogea
Teshigawara: a double vision poem
"Snowflakes carried by the wind in a pure blue sky." Japanese is a language that, seen from here, is akin to magic. A small handful of syllables, Kazahana in this case, is enough to describe in the mental space of those who master the language a poetry of rare sophistication, whereas in other cases it would take an abundant rain of syllables to translate that which, for us, would be obvious. The absolute otherness of the Rising Sun viewed from the where the sun sets… The choreographic language of Saburo Teshigawara derives from a double mystery: it can be explosive, saturated with ecstatic movements, overloaded with electrifying speed, without other meaning than that which is shown; it can also be infinitely restrained, parsimonious, even imperceptible, to express the evanescent shiver at the moment a flower blooms.
But the Japanese choreographer is not some loquacious theoretician. A pure, maybe even absolute, formalist, he does not try so much to say as to show and feel. His characteristic is in fact that he thinks of his creations as much as artistic installations as dance in the strict, kinetic sense of the term. His latest work does not escape from this idea of a global sensorial art. Thus, the stage is encircled by a sort of cubic prison with thin bars like a curtain of rain whose transparency and perspective vary in function of a subtle play of skimming, oblique or vertical lights (one thinks of the optical art movement). In these three dimensions, plus one if we add the antimatter sound by Neil Spencer Griffiths, unfolds a succession of aesthetic tableaux of indescribable beauty, truly supernatural.
Embodied by a multiethnic troupe, Teshigawara’s dance works on the extremes. Slowness and speed, rigidity and flexibility, concentration and explosion, harmony and chaos, wisdom and folly … The only constant: the supreme intensity underlying even the slightest gesture. When this intensity slackens for a few movements of more classical dance (even though it has the taste of ash of this post-Hiroshima and Nagasaki era in which we all live), it is only to rear back up in a final attack, an ultimate solo with a staggering density (by Rihoko Sato).
Does Saburo Teshigawara like to see his dance as “a sculpture of air, a sculpture of space, a sculpture of time”? In this case, Kazahana, his latest creation, is directly carved in the marble of our memory: the indecipherable enigma of a sublime magic spell from the Land of the Rising Sun.
Midi Libre Daily 26/06/05 Jérémy Bérnède
The axis of time and space. Swaying senses.
The small group consists of 4 female and 6 male dancers, but their nationalities vary from more than 5 countires including Europe, Asia, and Africa
Nevertheless, they have all fully digested Teshigawara’s method, blending into a homogenious style. So the work creates a more universal atmosphere beyond nations, rather than something just “international”.
Movement choreographed by Teshigawara is very logical and elaborate, and the dancers apply themselves to a wide variety of movements. They move the centre of their body balance up and down, twist, gently tilt their vertical axis, and gradually reducing from the breathtaking motion passing through the audiences sights, sliding towards extreme slowness.
The choreography gives each part of body a different movement, and arbitrary repetitions of motion and rest, making the bodies seeminglessly look like floating algae in the water or a bunch of sparkling fireworks.
Following these impressions with ones eyes, the coordinate axis of time and space seems to start to sway, and one starts to be under the illusion that it is the observers who are dancing, and not the dancers. It was an hour and a half of being totally committed in a high quality dance, floating on the undulation of space-time.
The title "KAZAHANA", is not referring to a weather phenomenon, but means "an extraordinary moment when unbelievable things suddenly appear. In that sense, the piece has realized the concept of Teshigawara’s creation.
What is more, the excellent lighting and sound design transformed the venue into a three dimentional universe.
The Asahi 9/02/05 by Ryoko Sasaki
Kazahana, ode to the fluid body
The patter of a monsoon rain fills the air at the Opera. On stage, a dancer, with minimum gestures but full of grace, welcomes the water on her body and makes us almost taste the sensation. A first solo, under a curtain of rain. Second tableau: a duo in a bluish semi-darkness. The lights dress the space, creating volumes. Then a trio of white ladies slides onto the stage. This time, the light undresses through a subtle game of transparency in the costumes. Saburo Teshigawara, the Japanese choreographer who presented the world premiere of "Kazahana" at the Opera last Friday and Saturday night as part of the Parallel World - Japan in Lille 2004 program, proceeds in this way, by tableaux, by touch, by visual and sensorial ellipses. Flashes of beauty and bliss, instants of grace. The spectators' eyes will also be tricked by surprising optical effects, but in the end will integrate into their vision the curtain of strings stretched vertically, a giant harp behind which the dancers evolve and play. To a minimalist yet warm music, Saburo Teshigawara plunges the spectators into truly beautiful worlds of the senses. A body offered to the rain, another adjusting itself in a wedding to the notes from a cello. Two men confronting each other in a stylized martial arts battle. Or superb tentacled bouquets of dancers that intertwine and come apart, veritable living coral. And these bodies and arms stretching and waving towards the azure are always impressive. Body-flowers and fluids, moving and poignant, at the mercy of the winds and currents. Superb.
Nord Éclair 1/6/04
Saburo Teshigawara Makes a Rare Visit to New York
There is no doubt an answer to this question, but I don’t know it: Why hasn’t Saburo Teshigawara appeared more often in New York? Or in the United States for that matter? This Japanese choreographer and dancers was last here, at the Brooklyn Academy of the Music in 1994. Before that he was in Boston in 1989 and New York in 1992, but that seems to be it. For this summer’s Lincoln Center Festival, he slipped into the Rose Theater on Friday night, with a single repeat on Saturday, and now he’s gone again.
The bitter good news, however, is that “Bones in Pages” was magical, one of the most striking examples of imagistic dance-theater, or dance-art installation, that I have ever seen.
There is a stage floor on the left, but it stops toward the audience’s right, giving way to densely arrayed black shoes. There is a table on the far left covered in broken glass, two plexiglass boxes in which bits of antique furniture sit, a sculptural piece with two more shoes stuck way up on the right rear wall, and some black protrusions “more books”on the right wall.
Periodically Mr. Teshigawara pulled a book from the wall and tossed its blank pages into the air. It was very beautiful, if utterly mysterious, especially as lighted by Sergio Pessanha*, with sudden wedges of brightness and turquoise splashes that looked like waterfalls.
The piece began with the bald Mr. Teshigawara seated at the broken-glass table, his head bowed into the shards. Gradually one became aware of a black bird stalking about, contained within the set by a subtle scrim that also softened the light. Mr. Teshigawara’s company is called Karas, which means crow in Japanese, but one of his managers said that crows were hard to come by, so this was an unusually large and active baby raven. Any “nevermore allusions” were apparently inadvertent.
Two associates, Kei Miyata and Rihoko Sato, likewise dressed all in black, played a deranged masked man thrashing about in the shoes and an avenging ghost; the image of the ghost against the rear wall, her arms casting blurred gray shadows, is another that will stick in the mind.
It would probably be too much to expect a hesitant American ballet company to invite Mr. Teshigawara to choreograph, though he was trained in ballet and leading companies in Frankfurt, Munich, the Hague, Paris and Geneva have done just that. But it would be criminal to have to wait another 12 years to see more of Mr. Teshigawara’s own Karas performances.
*Lighting design by Saburo Teshigawara, lighting operation by Sergio Pessanha.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/24/arts/dance/24sabu.html
The New York Times 24/07/2006 John Rockwell (Director of the Lincoln Center Festival, 1994-1998)
Book Sorcery - A man and a raven prowl the corridors of dream
...Teshigawara's installation, Dance of Air, resonates as a dream maze, a
playground for the mind. Borges would feel at home here. ...The dance is a
mysterious journey. We see the impact of thought and minute inner climate
changes on his body.
...The two Lincoln Center performances of Bones in Pages, created in 1991
and revised in 2003, whet appetites for more of his pieces. Seldom does dream as art make such mesmerizing inroads on the watcher's soul.
http://www.villagevoice.com/dance/0631,jowitt,74052,14.html
The Village Voice 01/08/2006 Deborah Jowitt
Saburo Teshigawara is a magician of movement. Even when he stands stock still he seems to be in motion - or threatening to be. At such moments, so much energy is compacted into the immobile solitary figure on the stage that you, the observer, suspect yourself of missing something, perhaps a gesture too minimal or swift or implied to notice.
…The pacing and phrasing of the work are brilliant, aided by Teshigawara's customary virtuosity with lighting, which he uses to conceal as much as to illuminate. The work begins and ends with Teshigawara's powerful head spot-lit in Zen-like meditation, though it seems anything but empty of thoughts. He is joined by two female dancers, who enact their own solitary agonies and furies but are every bit a part of his uncompromising engagement with the chaotic hell of human violence.
The Times Literary Supplement (online) 22-23/10/04 by Simon May
Dance as a sculpture of air
Teshigawara's performance does not have a narrative structure, none the less a story happens between the beginning and ending position.
Mixing disharmonious sounds with the sounds of the classical music which adjusts his movements which are in one moment jerky and bodily unusual and in the other balletically recognisable, makes the impression of powerful disharmony the dancer is confronted with.
Bones start dancing with the book pages, a body sets free; along with the movement of pages which is woven with the dancer's movements, a place in the left corner of his cell for a moment seemingly expands.
The work of the Japanese choreographer is specific: it distinguishes from the western dance by the movement as well as by the atmosphere the choreographer restores on the stage. Besides all these he combines elements of classical and contemporary dance expression in an interesting and in a way inseparable manner. On the stage he is present with carefully elaborated movements, and even more with extensiveness of his spiritual reflection and search for his position in space and time.
Finance 18/10/04 Ana Perne
Perfect Allegory of the World
A split up place, which distinctly differs from the usual concept, is a place of memory, within which a protagonist's dance takes over lines of the past, with tenderness soaked with the rich patina of everything experienced, with which the dancer (literally) caresses the Past itself. The movement is entirely deliberate to an extreme and has a maximum effect. Teshigawara's dance (in the first part he dances alone, in the second and in the third another dancer joins him. These two dancers have precisely measured space and they act as shadows or a commentary) fills the place up, pulls it within himself; but we can also affirm just the opposite: the place "moves or dances the dancer" – symbiosis, which is also created by a splendid music, mixture of hard mechanical beats, noise, voices, and spiritualised light, is perfect. A light resembles a movement, whose span reaches from cut, trembling gestures, stamping, leaking into the space, lyrical and soft passages when the body even pours into the movement, to motionless states of absolute concentration. In its movement this body, which is mostly stretched into a vertical, actually does not appear to be in the contact with the ground, but appears to be an elemental part of air which this body is surrounded by. A performance works as a whole due to its components woven into one as some sort of a pre-mover who triggers infinite abundance of metaphors.
Ve_er 16/10/04 Anja Golob
World is out off the track
Teshigawara's excellently performed movement passes from frenetic, impulsive, rigid dance into softer, more circular and ultimately static sequences.
The whole event which is taking place on the edge of the vertically placed glass barrier is accompanied by a falcon, a creature which is excluded from the performed Teshigawara's world, and could be probably understood as a metaphor of a stable order excluded from this world.
A performance lasting a little less than an hour distinguishes itself for its intelligent structure and excellent performance of all elements which are again Teshigawara's signature to his explicitly authorial language.
Delo 15/10/04 Mojca Kumerdej
Here, the body language is simply an energy flow carrier. The dancers, capable of making the flow of energy visible with their body, appearing suddenly at the tip of their fingers, spreading along the arms and dominating the body before running along the legs, are rare (because we should forget all the words instilled in the past and the present). The effect is surprising, as along these paths, we can at any moment locate the exact position of the energy impulse. Thus, the dance of Teshigawara becomes a topic of fascination.
Hebdoscope 9-27/07/04
Like the work of a goldsmith, the stage is designed to its smallest details: a wall made of open books, pages flying in the wind, as if to let them breath. Heaps of shoes, glass and acrylic trace the borders of a reflection on the bodies, their gravity and their freedom of movement drawing in the air this fantastic medium of exchanges.
DNA - Dernieres Nouvelles D’Alsace 26/06/04
Tonight, we see the choreographer/performer in a completely different light. Alone, he evolves in his own installation, “Dance of Air”, made of hundreds of books, shoes and transparent acrylic panels. The dancer gives body to everything he unites in space with a fluid, introspective dance.
From matter to idea, from object to bodily awareness of the object, from bone to the written page, “Bones in Pages” is in the image of its creator, as much painter and calligrapher as dancer. Saburo Teshigawara writes sign by sign. And all can read him with no problem.Saburo is a real poem.
Liberation 17/06/04 by Marie-Christine Vernay
The Fine Library
A choreographer with a very rich plastic universe, Saburo Teshigawara excels in the art of the solo. “Bones in Pages” is testimony to his remarkable mastery. The visually superb piece exudes an exceptional feeling of strangeness and depth.
La Quinzaine des Spectacles by Philippe Verriele
Mysterious beauty
This was the fifth time in seven years that Saburo Teshigawara (Japan) performed in Creteil as part of the Festival d’Automne. The dancer dazes us with amazing technique, in the speed of his arms as in the fluidity of his "boneless" body which waves like an aquatic plant. Choreographer, dancer, creator of splendidly colored lightings, architect of mysterious sets and creator of sober black costumes, Saburo astounds us with the beauty of his stage direction. He also, along with his partner Kei Miyata, mixes the music; metallic rustlings, long silences and melodious compositions by Estonian composer Heino Eller.
"Bones in Pages", a solo work first performed in Frankfurt in 1991, became a trio in 2003. The set, which we discover fragment by fragment, depending on the lighting, does not reveal its secrets all at once. The entire wall on the garden side seems to be made of superimposed wooden or cork bills, an illusion made of thousands of half-open books that Teshigawara touches lightly with a finger. Later we learn that the strange rough objects over which the masked dancer Rihoko Sato advances staggeringly, court side, are actually hundreds of men's shoes. When she throws them towards the audience, they strike against an invisible stage curtain.
The solos by Saburo Teshigawara, in turn slow, brisk, sinuous and repetitive, demonstrate a fantastic control of the body. The one he interprets spinning, a large bird in hand flapping its wings in beat, ends on a chiaroscuro worthy of Rembrandt's "The Philosopher". Great art.
Le Figaro, 21/11/03 René Sirvin
Movement In Front Of A Wall Of Books.
The spaces he constructs are sensuous, yet abstract. Around them a strongly focused light erects invisible walls. By entering this space with his expensive yet motionless body language, Teshigawara breaks its form. A space beyond the representational becomes visible.
..."Dance of Air" is the title of the installation with which Teshigawara seeks to overcome a caged-in existence, the prison of tight ideas and locked worlds. Dance is sculpture, he says, sculpture of air. The object (of art) is limited. Something new comes into existence when the movement of the body evokes imaginary points in space. The performance which Teshigawara dances in the midst of the installation is called "Bones in Pages".
The artists body is shaped like an object, every fiber in extreme tention...Teshigawara himself embodies what is incompatible: object and imagination, the material space and the castle in the air which implies infinity.
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 25/11/91 Edith Boxberger
At the moment he is the hit of the avantgarde dance scene - and rightly so: Japanese dancer and artist Saburo Teshigawara transformed in just half an hour the Black Box Theatre into a magical space. "Bones in Pages", a vehement defense of the right of that life which happens in books: tension every minute, every square of the space enjoyed thoroughly, a plausible concept of dance and space.
Munchner Abendzeitung 22/10/91 Christine Redl
Above all, Teshigawara is an artist who knows how to give physical presence to space and time and music. His body language is captivating since it is perfect in its form, keeping a balance between serenity and ecstacy. Rarely has a dancer chiseled his movements with such glasslike clarity, just to dissolve it at the next instance and then recreate it, reshaping his body with flashlike speed.
Kurier (Vienna) 30/5/92 Andrea Amort
The highlight is Teshigawara's 30 minute solo in the very end. There is only a family of goats, rabbits, and Teshigawara on the green field-like stage. He plays and frolics to the music of Mozart. Breathing deeply, stretching out the arms and rotating the upper body. It is a combination of simple movement, but as Teshigawara dances with hardly any tension like a leaping baby goat, one feels caressed by happiness…
It is as if he is tenderly saying that it is meaningless to dance showing off technique and trying to look beautiful intentionally. And the undisguised self, as it stands, is the most fascinating.
The Yomiuri 06/01/03 Hideki Sukenari
Saburo Teshigawara is as artist who continues to challenge for new possibilities. For Teshigawara, dance is not only about body movement, but is an aesthetic organism which is created by the fusion of all elements of which space is made by. Life, objects, and even air all exist together in the performance space, and crystallize by the shared aesthetics. It is magnificent how the reality of life, and a precious value becomes visible. Again in "Raj Packet", a sharp insight into the present lies underneath the penetrating beauty.
…This performance with breathtaking beauty and intensity, is the aesthetic reality of our times.
Ballet Tanz Akiko Tachiki
Washes away the common sense and grabs the heart
Raj Packet gives a surprise to ones intentions and expectations, and reaches to the heart which is washed and left like a white sheet of paper.
...Teshigawara seemed to have marked the starting point of his life. Knowing that one cannot be as such as the innocence of the goats that play in front of him, he continues to dance. Waking up the power of life by doing so...
The Asahi 25/12/00 Naomi Komachi
The dawning of light also as a spiritual headdress, reduction. The moving body as an energetical medium of lightbeams, sometimes three-dimensional, sometimes flat, sometimes transparent, sometimes massive. Panels of glass raise and lower themselves, a whole row along the apron shimmers green. A women in a white bodysuit freezes again and again like a sculpture. Light, movement and sound urge onwards, posit boundaries and make them translucent. The comprehensive-thinking Japanese Saburo Teshigawara has accomplished a quiet and yet intensive piece. Full of beauty and peace, poetry and severity.
Berliner Morgenpost 24/8/02 by Manuel Brug
The dark sides of the figure of light.
Trained as a fine artist, experienced as a filmmaker and lighting designer and revered as the most influential Japanese choreographer, he takes on flashes of light, refractions and silhouettes. He, together with his company, is showing his piece "Luminous" as a German premiere at the festival "Tanz im August". Weightless, green shimmering figures who glide through the darkness can be observed. Fluorescent ghosts, glowing shadows, dancers transformed into a highly aesthetic mobile. But Teshigawara only injects his dream images slowly and arranges an evening of disturbing, agitating beauty.
It begins with a solo by the choreographer, which at first seems steered by the chunks of industrially originated sound. The body reacts sharp-edgedly to the acoustic particle accelerator, jerks minimalistically before gaining elegance. Then the movements chase through Teshigawara's body faster and faster, wander through it from the soles of his feet to his fingertips, from which they are pumped into the space with a light turn. Liquefied rituals, chi flows. And in the flows of energy, the dancer's solid contours begin to dissolve.
Der Tagesspiegel 24/8/02 Ulrich Amling
Teshigawara is a fabulous dancer who moves as if he wished to ditch his ingrained academic refinement. The tension inside him between formality and abandonment is startling. Liquid yet cutting, he slips between sculptural stillness and whirlwind speed with amazing skill.
His two-part production occupies a transformative, black-and-white world disturbed by opacity or reflection. Large squares of glass hang close to the floor, while lower rows of screens are used for unsettling silhouettes or lit for skewed perspectival effects. Light is used masterfully to stake out and limit space or sever the bodies within it.
Even more indelible are the performances of Teshigawara and Stuart Jackson, a young man, blind at birth, who had made a cameo appearance in the first half. ..Teshigawara, in white on a bare stage, indulges in a long beautiful solo to a Mozart clarinet quintet. This is dance as idiosyncratic prayer. The black-clad Jackson joins him, arms reaching to heaven or streaming behind as he spins like a top. The men follow overlapping circular flight paths, achieving a memorable shared ecstasy.
The Times 14/8/02 by Donald Hutera
...it is as if the lithe, lyrical figure (Saburo Teshigawara) dancing centre-stage is conjuring up these elements of light and darkness. Creating, like Prospero driven by insatiable curiosity, an alchemy of light, sound, and movement that fills the stage with dazzling images and brilliant dance. This sense of fantastical builds even more in the second half of Luminous, when Teshigawara clothes his dancers in costumes that floresce greenly in the dark. They glow like phantasms, radiating an eerie energy that is both beautiful and sinister....They are adjuncts to a journey of the spirit. Part of an exploration of what it means to be alive. ...Whether our world is light or dark, we all share space, time, and air- that is what ultimately shines out from Luminous.
The Herald 13/8/02 By Mary Brennan
The choreographer built his work of darkness borrowing surprise effects from detective stories, magic from the circus, the belligerent atrociousness that saturizes the sound track from real life. "Luminous", or light at one's heels. Though the work may be divided in two distinct parts, a single unity reigns: the energy of the atom as it splits. Is this beauty? You would have to be crazy to say it wasn't.
Le Monde 28,29/10/01 by Dominique Fretard
With Luminous, his latest work on the theme of light and darkness, he dazzles us, sometimes in the literal sense, with the beauty and ingenuity of the sets and lights which act and dance with the performers . . . From the evolution of the shadow and light effects Saburo Teshigawara draws humor, beauty and surprise.
Great art.
Le Figaro 27,28/10/01 by Rene Sirvin
In "Luminous", there are so many pieces that would fill an entire evening that it could be overwhelming. But the viewer constantly feels concerned, caught up in the force of a work that, intensely associating speed and immobility, puts all the stage elements at the same level (sound, sets, costumes, lights, dance) and always returns to the most elemental movements (walking, running, balancing).
Liberation 27,28/10/01
In 'Luminous' the light is alive both as a physical element that can be changed, but also as a powerful energy from within, that shines through us. With Teshigawara and his skillful dancers in the Karas- company on the stage, 'Luminous' was in every way a glorious evening in the Aarhus Festivalweek.
Berlingske Tidente 7/10/01 by Vibeke Wern
It is very powerful that there, out of 'Luminous'' superaesthetical visuality, perfection of movement and transparency of spirit, materializes something as optimistic imperfect as a real human being. The dance of the soul with a living face.
Politiken 7/10/01 by Monna Dithmer
Awesome and exquisite, meticulously composed in his own aesthetics, Saburo Teshigawara's piece "Luminous" premiered at Tokyo's Theatre Cocoon. For Teshigawara, the invisible things like air and light have been important since his early experimental attempts. As symbolyzed in the title, "Luminous" poetically made the invisible quality of life tangible through a contemplative study of light. Delving into the means of "vision", reflection of light, shadow and darkness, he creates a delicate texture in dance. The superb installation that reminds of "NOIJECT", as well as the pure quality of dance, as in "Absolute Zero", make this new piece another unforgettable experience.
Ballett International Tanz Actuell Aug/Sep/01 by Akiko Tachiki
In this production, the KARAS company is joined by British actor Evroy Deer and Stuart Jackson, a visually impaired dancer. Jackson's performance is transformed by his impairment. He has the haunting ability to mask his technical accomplishment and present turning, wheeling, spinning dance that fairly screams "Freedom!" His duo with Teshigawara is a triumph of placement and speed, with no guidance or indication of spatial confinement. Neither touch in the physical sense, but the connection between the two is very real. Beyond that, it is a testimonial to the choreographer's instinctive use of powerful and empowering movement.
Like Ariel, Prospero and the forest of Arden, the shadows and the light, the free wheeling figures and the slow blossoming of dance weaves a spell right through to the end of "Luminous". Through the eyes we are bemused and tickled, and try to stay in that blessed state - despite the outside world and the need to navigate pedestrian crossings.
The Japan Times 27/3/01 by Gilles Kennedy
The solo of Teshigawara in the second half.
You could say that it was a "su-odori" - the word in traditional Japanese Noh for just plain dance with no costume or mask - in a simple white costume. Not exactly dancing to music, not with any movement that steals the eye. Just earnestly continuing minimum movement supplely on the huge stage. It even looks as though he is hardly doing anything. Yet, apart from this calmness on the surface, profoundly a vast world overflows and spreads from his small body. Its phases changing endlessly. It was like a piece of music that reverberates deep down in the heart of the ones who watch it . . . Teshigawara, who is responsible for scenography, choreography, stage design, lighting design, and costume, realized a poetic and fantastic world in the beginning of the second part with a dancer hanging in the air, three moving walls, and with the use of luminescent paint. The dance of the five female dancers who follow this scene is also wonderful.
This was an excellent piece of work to make one think again about what the body is, and what dance is all about.
The Asahi 25/3/01 by Tamotsu Watanabe
. . . two solos, a duo, thesis-antithesis-synthesis that mixes the most extreme opposites with a precious coherence. The man constantly passes from an apparently disjointed frenzy to the most profound calm, from the inhuman to tenderness, from stiffness to suppleness with extraordinary brutality and mastery.
La Depeche 3/11/01 by Jacques-Olivier Gadia
The Japanese choreographer and dance magician Saburo Teshigawara sent, with his piece "Absolute Zero" at the Schauspielhaus, all senses dancing . . . In the end, the dance, into which the dancer almost disappears, wins - wild, innocent, motionless and still. For a moment the world seems to hold its breath.
Die Welt 17/09/2001 by Irmela Kastner
Saburo Teshigawara offers us the spectacular incarnation of this ideal, a moment of shared beauty around the mystery of matter.
Le Monde (Telerama) 16~20/10/00 by Rosita Boisseau
In Japan, Saburo Teshigawara is the leader of a type of contemporary dance that refuses all labels . . . Here he questions the vain agitation of the body and the mind, the complexity of movement . . . the piece diffuses bodies that are both present and ghostly. Stripped writing, vital energy, and two impressive dancers.
Liberation 13/10/00 by Marie-Christine Vernay
Saburo Teshigawara gives the most inspiring choreographic interpretation of Mozart's concerto for clarinet and orchestra. A thousand miles from the classical, baroque or Balanchinian spirit, but in the colors of his unique, sincere, superb Japanese sensibility, this Japanese reinterpretation of Mozart a great moment of dance in beauty.
Le Figaro 12/10/00 by Rene Sirvin
There is virtually nothing on the stage, because he is the show. He is the wonder. Just a move of his finger installs chaos in the veins . . . Even motionless he emits an exceptional energy. His speed defies understanding, his precision slices the air . . . An extraordinary dancer who occupies the space like none else
Le Progres Lyon Matin 24/9/00 by David S. Tran
Signs of perfection in minimal movements
One is gripped for the entire 90 minutes. What could easily have been a dry kinetic experiment becomes, under Teshigawara's mesmeric spell, an emotional journey as well as a stylish spectacle. At the centre of it all is his concentrated grace.
In the end you remember this dancer for what your eyes saw but didn't quite register, or couldn't quite believe.
The Independent on Sunday, 21/5/00 by Jenny Gilbert
The eternal immobility
He is a mesmerising performer, capable of breathtaking outbreaks of high voltage movement - at times it seems the electronic charge of the music is pulsing like a current through his
It is as if Teshigawara is expunging all the irrelevant flash with which we stuff our lives to reach a state of grace where all can be expressed in one small but perfectly formed movement . . . It is compelling.
The Guardian 17/5/00 by Keith Watson
He moves like liquefied sculpture, his bantam body spinning in and out of unseenfolds of air with sharp, spasmodic grace.
Both abstract and emotionally resonant, a powerful combination.
The Times 17/5/00 Donald Hutera
His total artwork made up of dance, light, sound and video projection teaches us the melting point of a seemingly solid matter. It demonstrates disintegration and lets hope gleam through, that the new - in thought, in the world of the body and the airy-light elements, in dance - will only grow when the intelligence of autonomous movements gets the upper hand, the intellect falls silent. When, in view of a changing horizon of meaning, the present filters the past and transforms it for the future. The solid becomes fluid, the heavy light, and the visible becomes invisible and vice versa. Teshigawara is a magician, a shaman of change.
Tanzdrama Nr. 48, Issue 4/99
A ghost-solo in the dark, very delicate and hardly real . . . A duet of the highest formal power and mutuality . . . It is not dance as choreography which sets the standard here, but rather the successful attempt to create atmospheric moods which interlock the different stage elements into an inseparable unity.
Simple and sublime.
Die Welt 31/8/99
Dance, according to Teshigawara, finds its expressive force in the artist's attempt to dissolve the present in the moment of his performance.
Everything in "Absolute Zero" is concerned with the dissolution of the body into pure presence.
Der Tagesspiegel 29/08/99 by Norbert Servos
Nothing occurs here but the purest imaginable articulation of the language of movement, in which Teshigawara speaks and lectures with his body in brilliant placidity, giving this language its richest expression and form: a master of self-control and artistic control.
He is a true marvel . . . The man is a phenomenon.
Berliner Morgenpost 29/8/99 Klaus Geitel
AIR review selection
With Air, conceived for the Paris Ballet Opera (2003), Teshigawara created a fluid, purified choreography set to melodies by John Cage, played on the piano. To a backdrop of paintings by Paul Klee, the bodies play with the air, swing slowly and sway with elegance as they switch postures and balances before delicately laying down on the ground. Kader Belarbi and Jérémie Belingard give tangible form to the inseparable link between thought and movement, between music and breathing.
Le Figaro 20/03/ 2006 Isabelle Danto
The show will start with “Air” by Japanese choreographer Saburo Teshigawara: “For me, to dance is to play with air, to feel the body as air and air as the body”. A choreography in which the arms quiver like air, in which the dancers dream of being as aerial and immaterial as the music, in which the music is that of John Cage interpreted on the piano by Frederic Lagnau, which in four tableaux on the paintings of Paul Klee draws a succession of different lives. “It is as if a new life were created, as essential as the air for living things.” With Kader Belarbi and Jérémie Belingard, “bodies that sway with elegance” and that with great intelligence approach thought and movement in a dance that in its breathing recalls the fragility of the air that lives “between crystal and smoke ...”
Radio Notre Dame 18/03/2006 Claude Ollivier
“AIR” is undoubtedly a contemporary classic.
Ballet-Dance.com 16/03/2006 Franz Anton Kramer
VACANT review selection
The right length. That is the art of Saburo Teshigawara. Nothing is decorative with him. At the heart of his Vacant, the dancer Grant Aris, with the head of a monk, disjointed – but with what mastery! – by the strings of Ligeti. He occupies the stage. He is its epicenter, prey to the sickness of death. He trembles and it is a whole nation that wakes up with the willies with him. Saburo Teshigawara projects us towards the abyss, but grabs us back before we fall. Suddenly, the bodies are freed, lightness returns. The grace of a moment. Harmony snatched from torment.
Le Temps 18/03/2006 Alexandre Demidoff
With Vacant by Japanese choreographer, the audience discovers a totally different universe. All the dancers of the Ballet are on stage, dressed neutrally, their movements decomposed as if by a stroboscope. This muscular, highly demanding work is integrated into a fine, inventive choreography, served by superb lights and the performance of different pieces of György Ligeti by the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande and its solo cellist Stephan Rieckhoff.
Tribune de Genève 16/03/2006
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