Ayaka Nakama & Choreography Freeway Dance

A new style of dance with no boundary between stage and auditorium

Ayaka Nakama is a rising talent who, aside from dancing in a host of productions by choreographers from Japan and overseas, also produces her own work. This latest piece is a newly recreated Kyoto version of her solo work Freeway Dance, that premiered in 2019.

For this work, Nakama interviewed Kyoto residents and others about their memories of the first time they danced, and choreographed her dance based on these memories. The venue will be ‘landscaped’ with a jumble of objects and things, and over its four-hour running time, the dance will unfold inside the garden set, taking these personal memories as its departure point. The work is like a movement that suffuses a small universe, which the audience experiences while freely roaming the garden. There’s no boundary between stage and auditorium, or between dancer and audience; there isn’t even a clear start and finish. It’s as if everything comes together in pleasant harmony at this virtual garden superimposed on the performance space. Come and witness as the work lightheartedly yet radically dismantles creative conventions, opening up new possibilities for dance works.