Such an amazing time getting to devise, choreograph, write, and create with the Washi Family! We spent the first week in Kyoto at Ibe-san's house in the mountains working on the possible new piece and learning Kyogen movement. Then went into rehearsals at Morishita Studios in Tokyo. The set is totally comprised of Ibe Kyoko's striking Washi paper pieces. As you can see we had to climb up pretty high up in the rafters to hang some of them!
I began the process mainly as a playwright tasked with developing a new piece in a show that had already been produced before, but ended up having the chance to help out with movement choreography within other sections of the play using my experience in Butoh dance. Perhaps the biggest challenge was working with a Japanese actor to translate my new piece into archaic Japanese, but we got it done!
