USA Projects

The Empty Room is what you want and need it to be. It is desire, identity, self-awareness, the environment, and the hope of democracy. The Empty Room is a dance and music journey into consciousness in contemporary society. Acclaimed butoh dance theater artist Michael Sakamoto joins forces with an international team of dance and music collaborators, including award-winning choreographer Rennie Harris (Rennie Harris Puremovement), new music composer Amy Knoles (California EAR unit), Japanese koto and guitar duo Reiko Imanishi and Shinichi Isohata, Thai dancer Waewdao Sirisook, and Japanese actor-dancers Tetsuro Koyano and Mao Arata (Pappa Tarahumara), to offer a vision of a sustainable future that starts with oneself.

Each work in The Empty Room combines a different dance form and commissioned music score and is directly inspired by a Zen koan or text as well as a specific theme of social engagement. For example, the latest segment in rehearsal, “Soil,” uses classic butoh movement, a custom soundscore of koto, guitar, and rain, and a koan about farmers in existential struggle with the earth, all resulting in an implicit commentary on environmental crisis issues. (Watch an excerpt online at http://vimeo.com/26530759)

The next section in development, Flash (working title), will be a solo co-created with acclaimed hip-hop choreographer Rennie Harris and performed by Sakamoto in a butoh-funk movement form and inspired by intercultural and socio-economic crises in urban settings worldwide. Flash suggests metaphors for illumination, momentary enlightenment, and psycho-physiological agility. Flash is about the impermanence of life and the urgent need for transformation.

Other segments already developed include Genjokoan, a dance quartet based on a famous passage from the legendary text by the 13th Century Zen master, Dogen, about the moon reflected in a dewdrop as a metaphor for the oneness of all things, and A Bell, a Girl, and Some Water, inspired by Zen koans from the 16th Century Mumonkan collection about the fleetingness of desire and the lessons of unfulfilled attachment.

The sequences in The Empty Room have been developed and presented as works-in-progress since 2008 in the USA, Thailand, and Japan. The premiere of the full-length show is in Spring 2012 at Highways Performance Space (NPN Partner) in Los Angeles, and portions of the show are either booked or in negotation with the Jogja International Performing Arts Festival in Indonesia, Nyoba Kan International Butoh Festival in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Boulder Butoh Festival in Colorado, Butoh Festival International-Thailand, Divine Dance and Music in Chiang Mai, Thailand, and a Tohoku Disaster Benefit concert in Tokyo. Additionally, further engagements are being solicited for the 2012-2013 season and beyond.

Our minimum fundraising goal will cover the costs of completing the works and supporting travel for stage performers from Japan and Thailand to the Los Angeles premiere in Spring 2012. Any additional funds received would help cover artist fees and travel costs for either the composer-musicians involved (instead of using recorded versions of their scores) and/or for the actor-dancers to perform in further engagements.