After seven years, Tôn Thất An will collaborate again with Jo Kanamori for a new piece entitled Suspended Garden to celebrate the 20th anniversary of dance company Noism.
The piece will center on Kanamori’s long time muse and partner Sawako Iseki, who will perform with three of her partners in the past two decades: Aiichiro Miyagawa, Satoshi Nakagawa and Yuki Yamada.
“This autumn, Aiichiro Miyagawa will return to Noism after 11 years and Satoshi Nakagawa after five years.
Both dancers have been with Noism1 for many years and were Sawako Iseki’s partners.
With the addition of Yuki Yamada, who’s currently part of Noism, we have a complete line-up of Iseki’s past partners.
Iseki, Yamada, Miyagawa and Nakagawa. What kind of work will I create for these four?
It is precisely because they are dancers who know my choreography well, because they are mature dancers, that I wanted to envision a work that could only be created by these four dancers. That much was clear.
However, it was difficult to choose what music I would use. Only images with a sense of familiarity would come to mind.
With them, I could create something more unknown, more uncertain, more tingly.
So, for the first time in seven years, I decided to ask Ton That An to collaborate with me again.
For no composer knows dancers Izeki, Yamada, Miyagawa and Nakagawa as well as An.
No other composer knows Noism and choreographer Jo Kanamori as well as An.
An willingly agreed to the commission and wrote a new piece of music, which is so An-like .
The months and days we have each spent together, the experiences we have had, have become flesh and blood and made us what we are today.
What has remained the same, what has been newly discovered, what has been refined, what has been lost…
With all of this, four dancers gather in An’s sonic world and in my staging world.
A choreographer, four dancers and a musician, who know each other well, create one stage (a suspended garden).
It is not about bringing people together for the sake of creation, but about the fact that creation begins with the coming together of people.
It is with these five people that I can (and want to) challenge such a primordial creation.
Now I continue to listen to the music that An has sent me while biting back anxiety and excitement.
This creation seems to be closing the circle of Noism’s 20th anniversary,
I hope it will be the beginning of a new circle for the next Noism.”
Jo Kanamori, September 2024
Suspended Garden is part of a program entitled ENKAN.
The work is composed of four movements and a prelude, and for the recording, Tôn Thất An has invited his long-time musical partners in crime, Edric Chang (violin), Emily Chang (cello) and Allen Wu (percussion) as well as Japanese percussionist Hitomi Aikawa.
More about ENKAN
