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First Artist Names Announced!

2024.6.18

Kyoto Experiment is a festival that invites radical and experimental artists from Japan and abroad to present unique and exceptional performing arts works. The festival announces five artists, presented in collaboration with the Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels Festival, from the 2024 line up.

☞ Artists
Alessandro Sciarroni
(LA) HORDE × Rone with the Ballet national de Marseille
Ola Maciejewska
Christian Rizzo
Mathilde Monnier & Dominique Figarella

♥ Ticket Pre-sale! ♡
Tickets for (LA)HORDE × Rone with the Ballet national de Marseille and Christian Rizzo will be available for purchase in a pre-sale on July 13th ahead of the general ticket sale.

The full program will announced on Thursday July 18th.

A Message from the Directors

This year marks the fifth edition of Kyoto Experiment since we began as co-directors and the fifteenth edition of the festival since it was founded in 2010. During the past five and fifteen years, society both here in Japan and abroad have experienced rapid change and numerous unimaginable situations have arisen internationally. When we took over the festival in 2020 as a team of directors, we never imagined that 2024 would be defined by conflict, division, wars and humanitarian crisis.

We are happy that we are able to hold this festival in 2024, a celebratory year for Kyoto Experiment and a year that will likely become a turning point for the world, and that the festival can provide a forum for dialogue through the work of artists whose expressions are in tune with the times. We feel that what is needed now is to steadily and persistently create these opportunities for dialogue.

The line up of works by the artists announced today will be presented with
Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels, an initiative that Kyoto Experiment has been in collaboration with since 2022. “Division” is a word that repeatedly comes to mind as representative of this era; by bringing in to focus the transmission and future developments of contemporary dance embodied by the artists introduced here we hope we can use this as a clue or starting point for dialogue in the future.

Finally, we are pleased to share with you that we are also currently accepting “KEX Supporters” for 2024. This is a membership system we launched last year that allows individuals to make direct donations to the festival. As one of the main focuses of Kyoto Experiment is international exchange through the performing arts, we continue to face a difficult financial situation due to rising international travel and transportation costs and the weakening yen. We would also be very grateful if you could consider supporting the festival by becoming a supporter.

Yoko Kawasaki, Yuya Tsukahara and Juliet Reiko Knapp
Co-directors, Kyoto Experiment

Kyoto Experiment: Kyoto International Performing Arts Festival 2024
Dates ☞ October 5th (Sat) – October 27th (Sun) 2024 (23 days)
Venues ☞ ROHM Theatre Kyoto, KYOTO ART CENTER, Kyoto Art Theater Shunjuza, THEATRE E9 KYOTO and other locations
Organized by Kyoto International Performing Arts Festival Executive Committee
[Kyoto City, ROHM Theatre Kyoto (Kyoto City Music Art Cultural Promoting Foundation), KYOTO ART CENTER (Kyoto Arts and Culture Foundation), Kyoto Performing Arts Center at Kyoto University of the Arts, THEATRE E9 KYOTO (Arts Seed Kyoto)],
General Incorporated Association Kyoto Experiment
Dance Program co-presented by Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels
Kyoto – Saitama | Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels
(dancereflections-vancleefarpels.com)

☞ Artist Profiles

Alessandro Sciarroni　(Rome, Italy)

©MAK

Sciarroni is an Italian artist who, after studying both performing arts and visual arts, has been creating performance pieces since 2007. Having studied visual arts as well as boasting extensive on-stage experence, Sciarroni creates works that incorporate specific techniques and practices derived from a range of disciplines including theater and dance as well as sports and circus arts, He has been invited to countless international festivals and presented his works around the world. He was awarded the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement in the Dance at the 2019 Venice Biennale Danza.

☞ The Show!
The traditional Italian folk dance Polka Chinata has been danced by men since the early 1900s however is currently in danger of extinction. Sciarroni’s project Save the Last Dance for Me consists of a performance and workshop which aims to spread and revive this dance. This will be presented in the Auditorium at Kyoto Art Center from October 5th to 6th.

(LA)HORDE × Rone with the Ballet national de Marseille (Marseille, France)

(LA)HORDE ©Frédéric Stucin / Rone ©Cha Gonzalez

Founded in 2013, (LA)HORDE is a collective of three artists: Marine Brutti, Jonathan Debrouwer and Arthur Harel. Attracting attention for the way they question the codes of various artistic disciplines through in their work while also incorporating pop culture, film, and street dance; they have been the artistic directors of Ballet national de Marseille since 2019. Their creations are rooted in contemporary social issues and have included collaborations with senior citizens, the visually impaired, and adolescents.

☞ The Show!
Acclaimed and much talked about work Room with a View was created in collaboration with Rone, a key figure in the French electronic music scene, and features 18 dancers from 12 countiries from the Ballet national de Marseille. The work will be presented in the South Hall of ROHM Theatre Kyoto from October 5th to 6th.

Ola Maciejewska (Priziac, France)

Choreographer and dancer born in Poland and based in France; Maciejewska’s interdisciplinary approach to dance is based on careful research and an attention to precision in structure. Through working on convergences between dance and visual art she produces a critical reading of the history of dance through her work. In recent years, she has been frequently invited to European theaters and festivals for her research and performances on Loïe Fuller (1862-1928): the pioneer of modern dance who took the world by storm with her iconic Serpentine Dances.

☞ The Show!
Maciejewska will present two works that reinvent the Serpentine Dance; a dance that stimulated audiences’ imaginations through manipulating silk costumes, that completely covered the body of the performer, and transforming into dizzying forms resembling flames, butterflies and flowers. The theatre work Bombyx Mori, featuring three dancers, will be presented in the North Hall at ROHM Theatre Kyoto from October 11th to 12th. A solo performance piece Loïe Fuller: Research, which archives dance through the body and unfolds in close proximity to the audience, will be performed in the Auditorium at Kyoto Art Center on October 14th.

Christian Rizzo (Montpellier, France)

A multi-talented French artist, Rizzo is a visual artist, designer, musician, choreographer, set designer and opera director. He founded his own platform fragile in 1996. Working with the body, color, costume, space and movement as his materials, his works are abstract and fictional yet at the same time exude a world of exhilarating energy and rawness.

☞ The Show!
D’après une histoire vraie is a work Rizzo created after being deeply moved by a performance he witnessed by male dancers in Istanbul. The piece will be presented at Kyoto Art Theater Shunjuza from October 12th to 13th. Don’t miss this legendary work which premiered at Avignon Festival in 2013 and has since been performed all over the world!

Mathilde Monnier & Dominique Figarella (Montpellier, France)

One of France’s leading choreographers. Monnier served as artistic director of the Centre Chorégraphique National de Montpellier Languedoc-Roussillon from 1994 to 2013, where she collaborated with many artists from different genres. Following this she was artistic director of the Centre National de la Danse (CND) in Paris from 2013 to 2019. She is currently based in Montpellier. This will be the first time in 11 years that Monnier has presented a work in Japan.

☞ The Show!
soapéra (2010), a work made in collabroation with visual artist Dominic Figarella, began by questioning the traditional role painting plays in theatre: the stage backdrop. soapéra, an installation (2014) is a new version of this original work in which dancers negotiate a giant mass of foam that gradually spreads across the stage. This work will be presented in the North Hall of ROHM Theatre Kyoto from October 18th to 20th.

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