kamimura megumi official site

Works (2006-2007)

Diagonally (Original title in Japanese "Naname-muki")

Diagonally (Naname-muki)
photo by Yoichi Tsukada

Premiere
Sept 2007 at Merry Hall in Seoul, Korea (Korea-Japan Dance Festival)
Running time
25 min.
Outline
An experiment in equivalently placing a body and matter.
Three elements (a body, a boombox, and a desk) that can exist without relation to each other are placed on stage. Power relationship among them is not fixed but goes through various alterations without any centralization and initiative.
The piece traces changes such as a body being made to dance by sound, a desk placed under the body, the body falling from the desk, sound without relation to the body.
The dancer's movements narrowly slip through the boundary before signification, so one can barely interpret their meaning. The dancer makes each movement with a certain conviction, but one cannot tell what she is aiming at. Sometimes it seems that an intention exposes itself, but it is abandoned with no insistence and replaced by the next movement.
This prevents particular signification of movements and sequences, leading to unpredictable development. Viewers cannot be relaxedly watching because of this unpredictability, and both movements themselves and the time between each movement become thrilling.
Through a stream formed by these operations, the stage including a human body and objects appear as a landscape or an organic whole.

Mountain range (Original title in Japanese "San-myaku")

Mountain range (San-myaku)
photo by Kazuyuki Matsumoto

Premiere
Feb 2007 at Komaba Agora Theater in Tokyo
Running time
60 min.
Outline
Experiment about how to use space by placing human bodies, and drawing different reactions from same motives.
Review
Kamimura Megumi Company "Mountain Range (San-myaku)"
By Asa Itoh (Dance critic)

I have been interested in how Ms. Kamimura uses the space on stage. It doesn't mean she uses her body "dynamically". I meant that her dancers exist in real space. All the dancers have strong presence with full awareness of three-dimensional space.
(an omission of several passages)
Newly formed dance company presented a piece, "Sanmyaku (Mountain Range) . At the beginning, Ms. Kamimura used a method of "Formation" to emphasize the space. Five dancers appeared on stage one at a time and settled at their position. Each dancer acted as a role of chess piece. The dancer who just appeared on the stage has to read and interpret the positions of previous dancers created, then has to make position. The vacant area on stage must be considered as the "margin" of the whole space. Even after all five dancers appeared on stage, this formation game continued steadily in a straight manner. Dancers with no feeling, who also acts as chess piece, created eerie scene.
(omission)
Trisha Brown, who started her career at Judson Church in New York, lead the post modern dance movement in the early 1960's. Ms. Kamimura approached her work "Sanmyaku- Mountain Ranges" by using rules which reminded me of Brown's company work in the 1970s.
(omission)
In the comments on her workshop, Ms. Kamimura said that she would like to feel complex movements as simple lines through body.
(omission)
At the end, five dancers shock their body had a spasm for a long time. If showing the rules is the ultimate goal of this piece, the violent spasm is quite odd. It seemed that dancers' body have been processed with centrifuge device. The experimental period resulted to create fatigue or mass of bodies which can not be notated.
I do not want to think that was the catharsis to end the dance piece. It is also not interesting to think the spasm was rebellion of body against rules. What comes next after the experiment of separating body and movement. I would like to wait to see the result with expectation..