Greeting
Chair, Kyoto International Performing Arts Festival Executive Committee

Toward New Experiments

Launched in 2010 and reaching its tenth year in 2019, Kyoto Experiment has grown into a performing arts festival now with an established reputation both in Japan and internationally, thanks to the ambitious lineups of cutting-edge theater and dance and other activities programmed by the previous director, Yusuke Hashimoto, and his team. For this eleventh edition, the festival has changed to a troika system of three co-directors (Yoko Kawasaki, Yuya Tsukahara, and Juliet Reiko Knapp), while I have inherited the position of chair of the executive committee from the far more competent hands of Naoto Moriyama. With this fresh array of talent behind the festival, it is set to take on new experiments. As you will no doubt be aware, however, due to the impact of the coronavirus pandemic in Japan since last spring, we were forced to postpone Kyoto Experiment 2020 from its usual autumn dates to the following February and March, and hold it as Kyoto Experiment 2021 Spring. Though things this time have got off to a somewhat irregular start, art has the ability to “move heaven and earth effortlessly.” Disseminating that power of art here in Kyoto within the framework of the performing arts is truly the mission assigned to myself and the other members of the executive committee. Please look forward to the new Kyoto Experiment!

Fumio Amano
Chair, Kyoto International Performing Arts Festival Executive Committee