A four-hour solo dance in a garden tracing people’s memories…building, dancing in, and dismantling a temporary theater in a vacant lot…Ayaka Nakama captures the intricate moments between self and other that are only describable as “dance,” while blurring the lines between the stage and audience members. For this year’s Kyoto Experiment, she presents a Kyoto edition of her “walking performance,” which was first shown at her studio’s opening event in Kobe’s Shin-Nagata in 2024. The work takes the form of a tour in which the artist and participants stroll around Kyoto City (dummy). As the group explores the area, as if introducing themselves to neighbors, the work turns the everyday occurrences of a walk into dance.

The theater may appear closed off and self-contained, but it surely has an invisible effect on its surroundings—as the performers spend time there, as the audience travels toward it and then returns back home. This interim attempt to slither inside the system through the act of walking, then, perhaps resembles connecting the dots to make maps and constellations.