Noism × Kodo, Oni (new work)

Jo Kanamori

Theatre director, choreographer, and dancer, and the artistic director of the RYUTOPIA Niigata City Performing Arts Center Dance Division and its resident dance company, Noism Company Niigata. Moving to Europe when he was seventeen years old, Jo Kanamori studied under such distinguished figures as Maurice Béjart. He made his debut as a director and choreographer aged twenty while enrolled at the Nederlands Dans Theater. After ten years of working for several dance companies in Europe, he returned to Japan and established Noism, Japan’s first resident dance company at a public art center, in April 2004. His many accolades include the prestigious Japanese Minister of Education, Culture, Sport, Science and Technology Award, Niigata Nippo Culture Award, Mainichi Art Award, and Medal with Purple Ribbon. He previously directed and choreographed Noism0 in Gagaku—Encounter with Contemporary Dance, the fourth iteration in the ROHM Theatre Kyoto Traditional Theatre as Contemporary Performing Arts Series commemorating five years since the opening of the theatre.

Keiko Harada

Composer. Based on her unique idea of “creating the inner situation during a performer’s performance,” Keiko Harada works widely with music festivals, broadcasters, performance groups, and soloists, both domestically and internationally, and including collaborations with artists in other fields. Her many accolades include top prize at the Music Competition of Japan, the Governor of Yamaguchi Award, Yasushi Akutagawa Suntory Award for Music Composition, Kenzo Nakajima Music Award, Otaka Prize, and Women Who Shine Award. She has given concerts across Europe and East Asia, and plans to perform in Canada and Bulgaria in the 2022–23 season. Since 2012, Harada has served as head of an organization that seeks to create and pass on the music-culture aesthetics cultivated in regions of Japan through new resonances and physical expression. She has released four CDs of her work in Japan and internationally. She also teaches at Tokyo College of Music, Toho Gakuen School of Music, and Concert Hall Shizuoka AOI.

Kodo

Discovering infinite potential in the traditional musical art of the taiko drum on the island of Sado, Niigata Prefecture, Kodo aspires to recreate it for the contemporary era. Since the group’s debut in Berlin in 1981, Kodo has given over 6,500 performances in 52 countries and regions. Alongside its performances at theatres under the One Earth Tour banner in which various cultures and ways of living resonate with one another, it holds performances for school students, collaborates widely with artists from other fields, and performs for film and game music. On Sado, it holds the Earth Celebration international art festival and contributes to international exchange and regional promotion.

Noism Company Niigata

Noism is Japan’s first dance company with a permanent residency at a theatre, basing its activities at RYUTOPIA Niigata City Performing Arts Center. The artistic director is Jo Kanamori. Dancers from across Japan and the world selected by audition move to Niigata and perform throughout the year. Since it was founded in 2004, the company has presented its work created at RYUTOPIA both in and outside Japan, developing its activities at an international level while remaining rooted in Niigata. It also holds public classes for residents and undertakes outreach initiatives at schools. Its name derives from its vision of not being beholden to a particular ism and to instead convey to later generations the various forms of bodily expression that have accumulated throughout history.