Meet Up ECoC!European Capital of Culture

Meet Up ECoC!European Capital of Culture

Kasei Inoue

Contact person :
Kasei Inoue
Position :
contemporary dancer/visual artist
Link :
http://www.nydcreators.org
As a professional dancer and artist, Kasei have performed on stage both in Japan and overseas, taught contemporary dance and classical ballet to children and adults alike, and also illustrated for picture books and magazines as a painter. In his paintings, he have expressed the flowers and plants that proliferate in space like tentacles, gracefully, precisely, and violently as a swell of tremendous vital energy. His style is to leave it to his own imagination, but in \\\"Dansketch\\\" (dance + sketch), which he started in 2007, he drew the human body in an extremely simple way, conscious of liberation from such precision. With the theme of dance, he explore energy, the flow of time, and the feeling of space as another style of his own. From 2018, works of The BOX series have begun. Using the BOX as a theater space, he creates a micro-cosmos that incorporates photographs, paintings, and all kinds of materials with a rich dimension, using his own memories, experiences, and the body as motifs. From 2022 onwards, he started producing Swimming Birds to clear the dark world of war and conflict, as well as the pandemic of Covid-19. With the motto of creating works for the public, the power of art can transcend national borders and languages as lightly as the wind. [About NYDC/New York Dance Creators] A performance company founded in 1999 by a dancer Wakako Ishida and a multi-artist Kasei Inoue, who were once classmates at a dance school in New York. Combining unique landscapes, historical buildings, installations, and sound, they develop unique visual dance performances in various spaces around the world, exploring the various possibilities of the body. In 2009, they opened NYDC Studio in Tokyo. In addition to performing in Japan and overseas, they also hold physical expression workshops as part of the “Names Project where students are encouraged to dance their own dance based on their own names rather than following the given choreography. They hope to convey the wonders of dance as a communication tool for people that transcend language and job titles, and to share with many people the excitement of freely expressing one's true self without concealment.
 Recently, in addition to being invited to the Toronto Fringe Festival in Canada, they have also been active as a duo in Japan, and they held dance workshops and performances for everyone in Belgrade and Novi Sad, Serbia in 2015, Visionen19, Brasswel arts Center and neuestheater.ch in Basel in 2019 They have also appeared in nationally broadcast video productions.

Last update : 09 Mar. 2024

Works

Swimming Birds/① Swimming Bird #1~#311/② Acrylic on wood stainless push pin/③ 5×12~15cm/④ 2022年/Countless Swimming Birds swaying in the wind. Nine years have past since my father died. Even now, he sometimes appears young and sometimes old in my dreams. The image might have to been ingrained in my mind. Even if the substance isn’t exist anymore, only vague memories are revived in the brain in multiple layers. This is the idea where the inspiration come from for Swimming Birds. With this intangible memory engraved in my brain, I will spend my time coloring them as long as I live. Transcending national borders and languages, the many memories held by people flow around the world. The plate that forms the base from which the swimming birds are hollowed out changes its appearance, layering multi-layered colors as traces. In this world where war and conflict cannot endure, epidemics are extremely troublesome. Even so, to the fullest, let the air flow through your body, shake and transform, but live with an important and irreplaceable image in your heart. For those of us who live in the future, “Tomorrow is another day…tomorrow the wind of tomorrow will blow\".

a performance at Serbia embassy in Tokyo.
Art work by Masami Yoshioka

Curriculum vitae