Blog | October 5, 2018
Aya is an independent dance artist working in the field of performance and movement exploration. She began her training in Japan before enrolling at the Rambert School in London. She teaches, performs and works as a choreographer with various dance companies, institutions and communities. We managed to catch her 5min to ask about her experience with The Flames.
“I enjoy working with people who are not necessarily dancers or have not experienced dance classes but interested in performing or creating something together. I also enjoy seeing the bodies have much of histories.”
- How did you find this first session working with The Flames?
“It was fantastic and they responded to my ideas and tasks really well. Everyone was incredibly watchable performer!”
- Your track-record involves exciting multi-disciplinary projects (i.e work in galleries and site-specific work). What do you think is different/similar with Tricky Hat processes from what you’ve done before?
“I have quite wide range of works, yes sometime works in galleries with families exploring about the specific sculptures or architecture or even display, sometimes choreographing for traditional black box dance piece, sometimes rehearsal directing touring shows that somebody else made, but common points in all of this these works, what I’m interested is full body embodiment (it might be very small) and looking for the real and fresh expressions that come out from the person.”
- An important aspect of this edition of the Flames is to include older voices from Japan in the devising process. As a Japanese artist yourself, why to you think it’s relevant to build these connections?
“Fiona and I discussed about our ageing society here in the UK, and Japan has famously been facing the subject for a long time now. In 2015-16, I have worked in North East Japan where the population was effected by the earthquake and tsunami and met a few elderlies communities and really felt there were very natural sense of support to each other. They have experienced tragic wars and tsunami and of course individual difficulties but remained light hearted personalities and always look after each other. This place is a small village of rural area but I thought there are beautiful energy and spirits about ageing that we can get inspired and pass on to the rest of the world.”
Don’t miss the chance to see Tricky Hat’s collaboration with Aya Kobayashi and The Flames!
Saturday 13th October 3pm & 7pm at Tramway, Glasgow: http://bit.ly/TramwayFlamesAutumn18