Media

“NoH Bridge” is, as the title suggests, an attempt to create a place for two things to come together that are otherwise disconnected. We have all become very international but there are still large gaps between our cultures. Sommer Ulrickson (American director/performer living in Berlin since 1998) and Ryoko Aoki (a Japanese Noh performer living in Tokyo) are coming together to investigate specific aspects of this gap. Both women work in interdisciplinary forms involving movement, song and text to ‘tell stories’ in the broadest sense of the term. The process, which will be reflected more or less directly in the actual piece, is based on the performers desire to enter in to each other’s worlds. We will be playing with the exactitude of codified gesture and movement. Each performer will bring their training and experience to the table challenge the other by trying to teach them their ‘way’.
In order to begin our process we chose several pieces to serve as our source material including one of the earliest and most performed Noh theater plays Hagoromo. Specifically the dance between the here and now provides a focal point for us.
Our piece deals exactly with the differences (and perhaps similarities) between not only these two cultures focus on form and expression. In addition to this the Berlin-born sculptor Alexander Polzin will be collaborating on the visual aspects (including stage design) of the performance. He is also a European cultural counter-part to our American / Japanese performative styles. For the last few years he has been researching intensively and making works based on masks. In addition he will also be investigating the idea of the bridge. The bridge is not only important metaphorically for our piece but is also one of the main elements of the Noh stage. It carries a great deal of symbolism but is also the entrance and exit for the characters. It is also a metaphor for our entire undertaking – the bridge between Asia and Europe, between form and expression, between tradition and experiment.

programme 

1. presentation：

Ryoko Aoki / Sommer Ulrickson / Alexander Polzin 

2. performance：”NoH Bridge”

Ryoko Aoki / Sommer Ulrickson (performance) / Alexander Polzin (Stage Art) 

3. Q&A  

2012.11.24 (Sat) 15:00start (14:30open) 

Tokyo Goethe Institute 

7-5-56 Akasaka, Minato, Tokyo　 

 

presented by ensemble-no

managed by OKAMURA&COMPANY INC / NPO alfalfa

in collaboration with Tokyo Goethe Institute 

supported by Japan Foundation　

artists

 

Noh : 

Ryoko Aoki 

Ryoko Aoki graduated from the Faculty of Music at the Tokyo National University of Fine Art and Music with coursework in Traditional Japanese Music and focus on Noh plays. She obtained a Master of Music from the Tokyo National University of Fine Art and Music Graduate School. Currently, she is studying for her Doctorate at the University of London, School of Oriental and African Studies. She also led Noh workshops in the Takefu International Music Festival and at various universities in the UK, Republic of Korea, and Japan.
She has performed “TSUCHIGUMO,” a Noh Play, as part of the Japan Festival at Carnegie Hall in New York. In her repertoire, she has also performed the N-Opera MACBETH in New York and London.
She has played several traditional Noh plays, and she has also challenged collaborations with contemporary composers. She has worked with Peter Eötvös, Toshio Hosokawa, Joji Yuasa, Toshi Ichiyanagi amongst others. She was invited to perform at Wissenschaftskolleg in Berlin, Freie University Berlin, the University of Bonn, Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris and Villa Medici in Rome. She performed Noh dance in “Xenakis and Japan” produced by Electronic Music Foundation in NYC in February 2010. She had a concert with the Münchener Kammerorchester at the Münchener Kammerspiele in April 2011. She also had performances in Radialsystem V in Berlin during Asia-Pacific Weeks and gave Noh workshops for Sasha Waltz and Guests in September 2011. She performed Peter Eötvös’s Harakiri with ensemble Alter Ego in Rome in December 2011. She performed Cage and Hosokawa’s pieces with the Arditti String Quartet as part of their Japan tour in September 2012.

 

Contemporary Dance : 

Sommer Ulrickson 

Sommer Ulrickson was born in California. In 1995 she graduated from the University of California
at Santa Cruz and was awarded the Chancellor’s and the Dean’s Honors for her original theater
productions. She was active as a choreographer and actor in the award-winning Fifth Floor
Theater Company in San Francisco and also formed her own dance company “Torque”. In 1998
she came to Germany with the Chancellor’s Fellowship from the Alexander-von- Humboldt-
Stiftung. She began working as an assistant to Johann Kresnik in Berlin’s Volksbühne as well as
giving physical training to the Sasha Waltz & Friends dance company and the Schaubuehne’s
Thomas Ostermeier company. In 1999 she co-founded the ‘wee dance company’ and toured
throughout Germany and Europe.
Since 2004 she has been the choreographer and regular director at the Freilichtspiele Schwäbisch
Hall. Between 2006 and 2008 she taught as a guest-lecturer at the University of California at Santa
Cruz. Here she also received several grants to make new works. She has created pieces for
theaters including the Freiekammerspiele Magdeburg, Deutsches Theater Berlin, Sophiensaele
and the Neukoellner Oper Berlin. Currently she is the choreographer for Helmut Lachenmanns’
“Maedchen mit den Schwefelhoelzern” at the Deutsche Oper Berlin.

 

Stage Art : 

Alexander Polzin 

Born in East Berlin in 1973, Alexander Polzin trained as a stonemason. He launched his international career as a freelance sculptor, painter, graphic artist and stage designer in 1991, building on the single success of his first exhibition in Berlin’s Kulturhaus-Pankow four years earlier. Polzin’s series of illustrations, Monster, appeared in a collection of images and essays edited by the pioneering American cultural historian, Sander Gilman, published in 1995. The following year Polzin became Artist-in-Residence at the International Artists House in Herzliya, Israel, an appointment marked by the creation of the towering granite sculpture, Der Steinhändler. He has held residencies at ETH Zurich (1998), the Montalvo Arts Center in Saratoga, California (2004), and at the Centre for Advanced Study at the Käte Hamburger Collegium for Research in the Humanities in Bonn (2010/11). Polzin has also been a visiting professor at ETH Zurich and the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Alexander Polzin’s sculptures and paintings can be seen today in public spaces and galleries across the world, from Berlin to Bucharest, Jerusalem to New York, Paris to Los Angeles. Major exhibitions of his work have been presented at the Getty Center in Los Angeles (2000); in Budapest, Bucharest and Naples (2001); Berlin’s Institute of Advanced Studies (2004); Bard College, New York (2006); the San Francisco International Arts Festival (2008), and the Teatro Real Madrid (2011). His public sculptures include The Fallen Angel for the Collegium Helveticum, Zurich; the Giordano Bruno Monument in Berlin’s Potsdamer Platz; Socrates for the campus of Tel Aviv University, and The Couple, commissioned for the foyer of the Opéra National de Bastille.

<Announcement>