PROGRAM
Tokyo Festival Program
Kitamari/KIKIKIKIKIKI
"NOCTURNE FOR THE OLD FLOWER"
by Kitamari/KIKIKIKIKIKI
Choreographed and Directed by Kitamari
Cast: Kitamari, Mariya Takechiyo, Yoko Shimomura (singing)
Performers: Yae Yamamichi, Rina Hasegawa, Mikako Mochizuki, Satamitsuro Mochizuki*, Rokon Tosya*, Sou Katada, Yuuka Tomizawa
Recitation, Taro Yamamichi
*One of performers, Youko Mochizuki will be changed to Rina Hasegawa.(Updated on oct.18)
*double cast (Rokon Tosya performs on Friday, Oct. 22 and Saturday, Oct. 23 and Satamitsuro Mochizuki on Sunday, Oct. 24.)
The life of an aging prostitute, gathering up and reweaving words with her body
The choreographer and dancer Kitamari adopts an interdisciplinary approach to physical expression, resulting in such projects as her endeavor to choreograph all of Mahler’s symphonies. In the first of a new series, she here adapts a play into a dance performance. In this version of Nocturne, an early work by Shogo Ohta, best known for his “silent theatre” pieces like The Water Station, two dancers portray twelve characters’ comic yet cruel and painful exchanges about an aging prostitute, accompanied by live chanting and music on traditional instruments. The result is a vivid representation of the time that accumulates with age. Through both words and what cannot be expressed by words, the performance examines and blurs the line that separates theatre and dance.
Streaming
Streaming: Thursday, Nov. 18.– Tuesday, Nov. 30.
Ticket: 2,000 yen
Tickets on sale: Monday, Nov. 15
Ticket Office: ZAIKO https://tokyo-festival.zaiko.io/
*ZAIKO is used for broadcasting and payment. Viewers must complete ZAIKO’s free membership registration.
*Viewed via streaming. After payment, please view the broadcast within the specified viewing period. Performance broadcasts cannot be downloaded.
Post-Performance Talk
Kitamari（Choreographer / Director / Performer）
Yuichi Kinoshita （Kinoshita Kabuki）
Naoyuki Niisato（Dramaturge）
Schedule
| 10/22（Fri） | 10/23（Sat） | 10/24（Sun） |
| 19:00 | 17:00 | 17:00 |
Box office opens 1 hour before. Doors open 30 minutes before.
approx. 90 min.
Please be aware that the performances will be filmed for publicity and documentation purposes.
The performances will stream by online later. Please be aware that you may be filmed as part of the audience for the show.
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When visiting, please ensure you have read and understood “Tokyo Festival 2021 coronavirus (COVID-19) control measures and notice to visitors” on the Tokyo Festival website (*URL ▶https://tokyo-festival.jp/en/info/covid19/)and wear a mask. (*Visitors not wearing a mask may be refused entry).
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Accessibility
– Disability discount
– Wheelchairs
– Child care facility (reservation required)
*Please see below for more information.
https://www.geigeki.jp/rent/kids/
Ticket
【Tickets on sale】
・Advance: Wednesday, Aug. 25, 2021, 10:00 – Saturday, Aug. 28, 2021, 23:59
・General: Sunday, August 29, 2021, 10:00
【Ticket cost 】
Unreserved seating (with ticket numbering)
-Advance discount: 2,800 yen
-General: 4,000 yen
-Aged 25 or under: 2,600 yen
-High school age or under: 1,000 yen
– Disability discount: 3,600 yen (Same price for one accompanying person)
*Streaming tickets also available
*Cost of same-day tickets is general advance ticket + 500 yen
*Aged 25 or under/high school age or under/disabled person discount tickets: the same price applies for advance/same-day tickets (ID/disability ID required)
【Points to note】
-No preschool children admitted
– In order to obtain emergency contact details in the event of infection among visitors,we are limiting the number of ticket reservations to one per person per performance.
-Aged 25 or under/high school age or under tickets will be exchangeable vouchers. You will need to show proof of age (license, National Health Insurance card, or other official documents with your date of birth) or student ID at the reception desk on the day of the performance (Should you forget your ID, you will be charged the difference against the general advance ticket price).
*Vouchers may be redeemed from 1 hour to 10 minutes before the start of the performance
-People with disability ID are eligible for disabled person discount tickets. Please contact the Tokyo Festival Executive Committee office.
-Disabled person tickets will be exchangeable vouchers. You will need to show your disability ID at the reception desk on the day of the performance (Should you forget your ID, you will be charged the difference against the general advance ticket price).
*Vouchers may be redeemed from 1 hour to 10 minutes before the start of the performance
-If you are a wheelchair user and would like to attend a performance, please contact the Tokyo Arts Festival Executive Committee office.
-Wheelchair users will be shown into the theatre by a staff member about 5 minutes before the start of the performance. Please come to the reception desk at the theatre entrance 10 minutes before the performance starts.
-We are unable to refund tickets or change performance dates/times.
【Ticket Office】
・Tokyo Festival Ticket Center https://tokyo-festival.jp/ticket
・Tokyo Metropolitan Theatre Box Office https://www.geigeki.jp/t/
TEL: 0570-010-296 (10:00-19:00 except when theatre is closed)
*Cannot be used with certain telephones Business hours: 10:00-19:00 except when theatre is closed
*Operates 24 hours per day (excluding maintenance times)
・Ticket Pia https://t.pia.jp/
TEL: 0570-02-9999 (24-hour Sound Automatic Correspondence)
P-code: 508-086
・e+ https://eplus.jp/tokyo-festival2021/
・Confetti
【Japanese】 http://confetti-web.com/tokyo_festival_2021
【English】 http://confetti-web.com/tokyo_festival_2021_en
TEL: 0120-240-540 *Calls free of charge (Weekdays: Operator 10:00-18:00)
Access
Tokyo Metropolitan Theatre, Theatre West
Commentary
Choreographer and dancer Kitamari has performed and created numerous works in a variety of genres transcending modern dance.
Leading an ensemble featuring live shamisen and hayashi performances and song to accompany the dancers’ movements, she takes in the sound and lighting with a dynamically flowing physical rhythm. Supporting this in this performance as the bassuo continuo are the unvocalized words of a play.
The original play, Roka Yaso (“Nocturne for the Old Flower”), is one of Shogo Ota’s earliest works that primarily address his eternal theme of aging. It depicts the happenings at a port town brothel on the night of a lunar eclipse. The twelve characters, headlined by an aged prostitute who can no longer attract customers, unveil a story that is at once comical and also tragically cruel. Through uniquely metaphorical wordplay, the time of aging—and the playwright’s focus on the rich possibilities that lie within—are conveyed to the reader.
This performance is not only an abstract of the scenes that were particularly inspirational to the creators, but rather is the product of facing the entire text in earnest. The twelve roles are performed by two dancers (Kitamari and Mariya Takechiyo), who scrutinized the dialogue and stage directions in their rehearsals. Unseen and unheard words along with the balance of bodily and audiovisual elements (music, acoustics, lighting, costumes) were explored to their full potential.
“A lone whore is lying down. Straining one’s eyes, one realizes that she is in a standing position.” These two lines is taken from the stage directions at the beginning of the original work.(*) The words force the reader to think—in that sense, the creation of this project was inspired by the enigmatic questions posed by Ota’s work, and the additional question of where, precisely, the boundary between theater and dance lies.
(*This stage direction is included only in the original script referenced for this performance.)
Niisato Naoyuki（Dramaturge）
Original Work: Shogo Ota, Roka Yaso (“Nocturne for the Old Flower”)
Story
A lone prostitute (“Hana”) is lying down. So old that she can no longer sell her body, she lives (or dreams of living) at a brothel located in a port town. Set on the night of a lunar eclipse, we see a performance showing her failing at various negotiations to prostitute herself, as well as a young couple (the “Matroos” and “Toto”) making a secret promise to elope.
Amidst this, two customers unexpectedly come to the old prostitute as she is trying to banish her ill fortune. One is a blind youth (the “Blind Man”) who tells the story of his life as a child born out of wedlock, and touches the body of the aged whore. The next is an old regular (“Yuzo”), who says he has come to pay out her contract. Yuzo and Hana share a bed together.
Nevertheless, the old prostitute rejects the offer of her regular, and dreams of sailing away with the foreigner man on a smuggler’s ship. In the end, forsaken by her dreams, she takes in the end of the night of the eclipse, and is left alone.
Characters (Cast）
Two dancers will perform the twelve roles appearing in the original work.
Hana, an aged flower who dreams on the night of a lunar eclipse (Kitamari)
Yuzo, who enters without taking off his socks (Mariya Takechiyo)
the Master, who fears the eclipse (Mariya Takechiyo/Kitamari)
the Mistress, who regards the eclipse with hope (Mariya Takechiyo/Kitamari)
the Blind Man, who screams at the bottom of a ravine (Mariya Takechiyo)
the Blind Man’s Sister, who sells balloons (Kitamari)
Madorosu (Matroos), a seaman on a smuggler’s ship (Mariya Takechiyo)
Toto, a whore who falls from the ship (Kitamari)
a Man, who proposes to the Blind Man’s Sister (Kitamari)
Lili, a whore who gently cleans up filth (Kitamari)
the Customer, an extremely corpulant man (Mariya Takechiyo)
the Public Official, who cradles a kitten (Mariya Takechiyo)
About the Original Work
Written and directed by Shogo Ota, the play was first performed at the studio of the Tenkei Theatre Company (“Theater of Transformation”) in June 1974. The script was first published in Shingeki magazine, then subsequently revised and included in the collection Ōta Shōgo gikyoku-shū: rōka yasō (Collected Plays of Shogo Ota: Nocturne for the Old Flower) (San-Ichi Shobo Publishing Inc., 1979). This piece is regarded as the nexus of Ota's early series of works dealing with the motifs of “Okinawa” and “aging” from the playwright’s perspective. It was written while looking at a photograph from Okinawa—that of “a smiling old prostitute with a backside so big that it spilled over the edge of a small bed" (from the afterword to the above book). In the world of the play, time is woven by illusions, and present scenes subtly interpenetrate each other in a subtle manner. A song penned by Okinawan folklorist Fuyu Ifa (also spelled as Fuyu Iha) and quotations from numerous literary works are woven into the piece.
Shogo Ota
Born in Jinan, China in 1939, Shogo Ota served as director of the Tenkei Theatre Company (“Theater of Transformation”) from 1970 to 1988, and was actively involved in theater both in Japan and abroad. He worked as the artistic director of the Fujisawa Civic Theatre in the Shonandai Cultural Center complex, as well as the head of the Department of Visual and Performing Arts at the Kyoto University of Art and Design (now the Kyoto University of the Arts). In his characteristic "silent plays" such as Mizu no Eki (“The Water Station”, first performed in 1981), he pursued a form of expression in which the actors move at a slow tempo without uttering a word. Alongside this, he has created and unveiled many works making unique use of dialogue.
Profile
Kitamari
KITAMARI started dancing under the butoh dancer Masami Yurabe at the age of 17, and since 2003 he has presided over his own〈dance company KIKIKIKIKIKI〉. Graduated from the Department of Visual and Performing Arts, Kyoto University of Art and Design in 2006.
She also won the New Artist Award at the Agency for Cultural Affairs National Arts Festival in 2016 for "Nachtmusik" a part of her series of dances for all of Mahler’s Symphonies.
And, works based on traditional Japanese performing arts such as Kinoshita Kabuki "Musume-dojoji"which is shown solo for 60 minutes using Nagauta, and "ATAGO" which is a nationally designated important intangible cultural property and co-starring with the music of Saga Dainenbutsu Kyogen. Also, he is developing a wide range of activities that transcend genres, such as "We dance Kyoto 2012"and "Dance Fanfare Kyoto"program directors.
Column text by Takao Norikoshi
Staff
Written by Shogo Ota
Choreographed and Directed by Kitamari
Cast: Kitamari, Mariya Takechiyo, Yoko Shimomura (singing)
Performers: Yae Yamamichi, Rina Hasegawa, Mikako Mochizuki, Satamitsuro Mochizuki*, Rokon Tosya*, Sou Katada, Yuuka Tomizawa
Recitation: Taro Yamamichi
Music: Yae Yamamichi
Stage Manager: Syuji Hamamura
Lighting: Asako Miura
Lightning Operator: Hazuki Ozawa
Sound: Takenori Sato
Costumes: Chie Ono
Stage Assistant: Takayuki Yagihashi
Dramaturge: Naoyuki Niisato
Publicity Design: Manabu Masuda
Filming & Editing: Masaki Kawabata, Yukinori Nishimoto
Photography: Akihito Abe
Production Coordinator: Kanako Yamasaki (KANKARA Inc.) , Momoka Yunoki (Tokyo Festival)
*Double cast
Kyoto Art Center Artist in studio program 
Credit
Organized by Tokyo Festival Executive Committee[Toshima City, Toshima Mirai Cultural Foundation, Tokyo Metropolitan Foundation for History and Culture (Tokyo Metropolitan Theatre & Arts Council Tokyo)]
Supported by the Agency for Cultural Affairs, Government of Japan in the fiscal 2021
Inquires
Tokyo Festival Executive Committee
+81(0)50-1746-0996 (Weekday 10:00 - 18:00)