PROGRAM

Continuing Beginnings

In January 2026, ROHM Theatre Kyoto marks ten years since it reopened. “Continuing Beginnings,” the theme of ROHM Theatre Kyoto’s 2025 programming, is instilled with our hopes for the theatre to serve as a place where future aspirations intersect with past accomplishments, and to host the next stories in which everyone takes part and weaves together. We will commemorate our tenth anniversary with a key visual released this autumn and made by tupera tupera, a Kyoto-based creative team, plus a special program of events on January 10 and January 11.

In the ROHM Theatre Kyoto Repertory Premiere series, which aspires to build a body of work forming the assets of the theatre, we have launched the Hopes project, presenting talent in Kyoto to the world. As part of this, the theatre welcomes two associate artists—the young directors Masato Nomura and Yuya Nishida—who will create new productions and revivals over the course of several years. In addition, we will host productions by leading foreign dance companies and artists: Tanztheater Wuppertal’s first performances in Japan in eight years are of Sweet Mambo, one of the final works by Pina Bausch before her untimely death in 2009; Planet [wanderer] is a striking collaboration between Damien Jalet and Kohei Nawa; and Cloud Gate Dance Theater’s Waves sees the company’s choreographer team up with renowned Japanese digital artist Daito Manabe. Harnessing the network of public theatres we have cultivated to date, other highlights of the season include the co-productions The Burning Bride, an incisive commentary on contemporary society, L’elisir d’amore, in which director Kunio Sugihara takes on his first opera production, and a new entry in Toshiki Okada’s Unfulfilled Ghost and Monster series of plays that borrows the format of noh theatre.

Undergirded by our progress these past ten years, we continue to move forward step by step. New challenges and encounters await, where yet another story is born. I’ll be here at the theatre to greet you!

Yukako Ogura
Program Director
March 2025