Body cinema: Adapting for distortion by Hiroaki Umeda

Dancer and choreographer Hiroaki Umeda had been treated here with special care… His dancing technique, space design and approach to technology have made it so… I found this video thanks to DBM Mediterranean Dance Network which posted  Umeda’s new video ‘Adapting for distortion’ on their Facebook profile several hours ago.

hiroaki_umeda.jpgHiroaki Umeda in ‘Adaptation for distortion’
Photo by Anna von Kooij (c)

For those who aren’t introduced so far, I wrote review and interviewed Mr. Umeda in summer of 2008 during his guest appearance on Dance Week Festival. Enjoy the video of this amazing artist.

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DBM Mediterranean Dance Network



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This entry was posted on Sunday, August 30th, 2009 at 3:42 pmand is filed under body, body cinema, choreographer, contemporary art, culture, dance, installation, new media, new media art, performative, theatre, visual art. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.





  • hey Steve... tnx for your feedback...

    i see... yeah, indeed he improvises a lot, which is great for him as a performer... i think that this relation to digital inputs and urban life codes have brought him to this aesthetic...

    what i like particularly is Hiroaki's inspiration with nature... basically, i like a lot artists which use heavy tech stuff (new media) to explore and express their fascination with the nature...

    Sure, to each his own... i'm not necessarily enjoying heavy marked and mapped stuff on the stage... that indeed opens another topic, Merce Cunningham, Trisha Brown or William Forsythe's ground for instance... but some other time...

    best
    d.
  • I got a chance to see him perform a couple of years ago, and I found his work to be really intense and unnerving. As a person who enjoys simplicity, serenity and nature, unnerved is kind of my typical reaction to technology and I was impressed he could elicit that reaction through his movement. A classmate of mine described him as "a machine about to explode" which really summed up the experience for me.

    I heard he doesn't use studio space though, and improvises a lot...which is kind of hard for me to digest because I have a bias for more codified techniques with rehearsals. To each his own!
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