An encounter with mortality, written over a century ago, becomes a question for bodies today.

Inspired by Naoya Shiga’s 1917 short story *At Kinosaki*, *AYAKA ONO AKIRA NAKAZAWA SPACENOTBLANK* draws on the writer’s reflections on life and death, and his transformation of lived experience into literature.

Rather than retelling the story, this wordless dance piece explores how observation, memory, and relationships between performers can give rise to choreography. Through their original choreographic mechanism, “Physical Catharsis,” movement is generated, passed from body to body, and transformed along the way.

As the choreography is passed down to different performers, the work continues to evolve, inviting each viewer to discover their own landscape.

Duration: OFF-CINARS showcase version: approx. 35 minutes
Original full-length version: approx. 55 minutes
Performers: 3

This trio begins with a familiar sensation: the urge to hold back tears, and the body trembling. Beneath that trembling, the work traces a force—like an electrical signal—that acts before the will. It follows what the body can no longer contain, and where it goes.

The late butoh dancer Ko Murobushi threw himself into this force to break the norms that teach restraint. Yet he also pressed it down with his whole body, so as not to be swallowed. At the edge between surrender and suppression, he convulsed.

The three dancers take a different path. Rather than forcing the energy downward, they allow it to seep out through various parts of their bodies. Moving between restraint and overflow, they sometimes weep, sometimes laugh. And the flesh becomes a soft machine that, like the gut, continues to function beyond the reach of the will.

Duration: 40 minutes / Performers: 3