SAKURAKO: "The best butoh masters learn through observation"

Can You tell me in short the main ideas are behind your art?

I am hard to define a multidisciplinary artist. Although I have been trained as a visual/conceptual artist, I also practice martial arts and various dance & movement technics. I have graduated from Fine Arts with my signature work site-specific installations and contextual interventions. I worked in various media drawing, sculpture, painting, photography, video and performance art. Since 2011 I got in contact with butoh, an avant-garde Japanese dance, which radically transformed my work and life. Currently I focus on creation of live performances using butoh techniques, hence the work usually balances at the edge where fine arts meet theatre and dance. I also work on the dance-film project “Sakura Dream”, which is a karmic saga unfolding within self invented mythology through abstract image, movement and sound.

“Thought is a form, body never lies and dance is a native language of the soul, “ - that would be a summary for now of my artistic research throughout the decade.  I suppose the most fascinating thing for me is to discover what is like to be a human. An ongoing attempt to understand myself so I can understand the others and relate to the world around me.

Human condition is a subject matter of my works, as an ongoing exploration of the body/mind/spirit phenomena and body memory. This is an endless discovery like an archeological excavation of the body, awakening of the forgotten memories. What do we know that we don’t know we know?

Concepts of karma, ego and the true self are under investigation. A Japanese concept of MA, the space in between, emptiness, interrelation of formlessness and form are the reoccuring issues would it be working with the physical space creating installations or with the body making a dance/performance piece. The aim of the performance work is through the transformation of the performer’s body to transform the space around so the transformation of the other bodies within this space would also become possible.

You worked with a plethora of artists over the years. What collaborations were/are the most interesting and important to you and why?

I have graduated as a visual/conceptual artist from Rietveld Art Academy in Amsterdam where the focus was on one’s solo work. However since my graduation in 2008 I was studying martial arts and dance techniques to improve my performance work with various masters around Europe and in Japan. Since 2012 I have launched a nomadic artistic collaborative initiative Re-United Now-Here, as a nomadic dance-theatre company creating works with the members of workshop and other dancers in situ in Amsterdam, Paris, Aurillac and Kyoto. Since then I have collaborated with variety of artists: just to mention few butoh artists: Yumiko Yoshioka (JP/DE), Valentin Tszin (RU/DE), Alessandro Pintus (IT), Takashi Iwaoka (JP/NL) and some filmmakers like Chris Rudz or graphic designers like Michal Jurys and Justina Nekrašaitė, etc.

Currently I am an artist in residency at the Château Éphémère where I work solo, lead Re-United Now-Here and collaborating with the legendary French musician/composer and performer Phil Von, the lead singer and the founder of Von Magnet.

Since 2015 I work on regular bases with the Paris team of Re-United Now-Here and currently I prepare a new group piece in collaboration with the musician Amine Boucekkine to be presented in the theatre in Paris next January.

The truly one of the most inspiring and profound collaborations is my partner Phil Von. We are both long-term artists at the château at the moment and partners in life and art. Although we are working together on variety of projects, usually Phil creates music for my performances I create solo or with Re-United Now-Here. This year we finally had a chance to work in the same space at the same time for several months and we gave birth to the projects together such as Not A Love Story and Corsonor. This is when we really collaborated thinking together, trying things out and learning from each other’s practice: me by learning some of flamenco and him of butoh.

Corsonor is a solo performance piece where the starting point for the original sound track was recording various bodily sounds produced by my body. Further followed by choreography as my bodily reaction on the first draft of the sound track while organically the concept of the piece was also developed. The piece was premiered at the Théâtre du Temps in Paris in April and is programmed for a butoh and acousmatique music festival in October in Le Cube in Paris.

Not A Love Story is a multidisciplinary project – a duet live performance with the strong visual installation with cinematographic video, electronic music, flamenco and butoh dance and physical theatre elements.  Phil & I worked ah hoc on this idea since 2013 and presented several short versions in Amsterdam, Paris and Kyoto. This January – March we had a chance to work on this project in depth creating the set and the structure of the piece and for the video part we collaborated with the team of video artists Stefano Forlini, Cléopée Moser and Victoria Donnet. The 30 min. performance with the participatory theatre elements for the audience was premiered at Château Éphémère in March.  We have already presented the piece in Vicenza in Italy and I hope to show it in Vilnius as well.

The art/dance is magic. But, what ends, when there‘s no art/dance?

There is always art. Everything is already there. It’s a matter of illuminating something in a way that pierces through the habitual perception. There is always dance… from the invisible vibration to a subtle movement of the leaves in the wind, or the waves on the shore, insect crawling, bird flying, or human walking. This is why the nature, insects, sea creatures, birds and animals, as well as humans especially babies, mentally and bodily handicapped and old people are the best butoh masters to learn from through observation.

What is and what is not art/butoh?

Well, this is an old question I was questioning still studying at the Rietveld academy analyzing the practices of Duchamp, Beuys, etc. Everything could be art, but not everything is art. It takes an artist to notice something extraordinary even within the ordinary and bring it to the attention of others.  Like in butoh, there is no form, not really rules as such, so it seems like anything is dance, but not anything goes… It is about getting the essence of it or not. Yes there are a lot of people doing whatever calling it  “butoh”, which has nothing to do with butoh, unfortunately. Butoh is a life long practice, serious discipline. Due to its specific aesthetics a lot of people are drawn to it, as we are used in the result oriented western world trying to get some “quick fix”, ending up copying the form without getting the essence of it, because not anyone can dare to do what it really takes.

What do you think about relations between the old art and computer art? Are they compatible?

I do not discriminate when It comes to media, but what is quiet upsetting that there is still a lot of “rubbish” nowadays passing by as “art” just because it’s a new media, digital or new technology is involved. It does not matter would it be a dance piece, painting or digital computer art as far as there is a concept and certain artistic skills with sensitivity to transform the matter to be able to touch the others, to puzzle, to question, to uplift, etc. is great!

What do you think about thousands of neofolk/industrial/ambient/tribal/electroacoustic/avant-garde etc. bands/projects? Is it a kind of trend, o just a tendency forwards better music? What about the tendency in art?

We are still in this all embracing post-post-modernism, where I am rather bored already celebrating it and am longing for something like neo-neo-romantism, I would say. I do know that after being a conceptual artist for a while at some point rather organically I felt very strongly necessity for something real, this is when I started to do performance art, as only through my body, through my presence I can really create something that matters, touch people directly and immediately, surpassing the intellect. I do observe that there is a general tendency nowadays towards the performance/live art.

What Lithuanian and foreign artists do you value most?

In general I am rather bored with the state of fine arts at the moment as there is hardly anything ever new what is thought provoking or moving, but luckily there are still some performing arts performances, which can touch me and inspire. I am a big fan of Andrei Tarkovsky, still one of the best film-makers and a  true artist.  I do appreciate Japanese Noh theatre and Korean Pansori performances a lot.

As far as Lithuanian artists are concerned, I do not really follow so closely, obviously living abroad, but to mention someone coming to mind is Oskaras Koršunovas. I also curated an ART LT show in Amsterdam in 2015, which I initiated back in 2004, when I encountered a young Lithuanian artist Kastė Šeškevičiūtė studying at Dutch Art Institute and we made an interesting presentation of her conceptual paintings featuring soviet symbolics in the show although they were censored by the organisers fearing the Lithuanian officials invited and involved in sponsoring the event. As for foreign artists there are many, but just to mention few: Romeo Castellucci (IT), Dairakudakan (JP), Dimitris Papaioannou (GR) and many more.

What inspires you most?

Many things, does not matter good or bad: nature, mythology, society and people, city, culture, religion, science, folklore, etc. and my own life and experience I suppose. Sometimes the most amazing things happen to me and I think to myself this is seriously stranger than fiction, or it is like a scene from the movie, it cannot be for real! A lot of inspiration comes from within, my inner world, emotions, thoughts, dreams, my way of being in the world and in the relation with others. As my friend and a butoh artist Ken Mai says, artists are like sakura tree, our roots are deep in the ground, sucking on something stinky like the shit or the rotten vegetation or flesh (our traumas, our experiences, pain.) but we are capable to transform all of it and produce the sakura blossoms, something so ephemeral, so beautiful, fragile and with such a subtle sent (the work of art, especially live performance) which can touch people, make them contemplate and inspire them…

Ačiū (thank You).

Links:

sakurakoparis.wix.com/Sakurako

http://reunitednowhere.wix.com/theater-plays