Dance Base Yokohama Work in Progress Review｜Ayaka Ono Akira Nakazawa Nakazawa You Nakazawa Talks about Watching “Dance Work No. 3: Naoya Shiga’s “At the Castle”” by Space Not Blank [Part 2
On August 30 and 31, 2025, Dance Base Yokohama (DaBY) presented a work-in-progress of “Dance Work No. 3: Naoya Shiga’s “At the Castle”” by Ayaka Ono Akira Nakazawa Spacenotblank. This project is based on Naoya Shiga’s novel “At Kinosaki,” and was launched in May of the same year after a residency at the Kinosaki International Art Center. Inspired by what Shiga saw and wrote in Kinosaki, three dancers (Hokuto Kodama, Ayako Saito, and Sumi Tateyama) attempted to reweave the “continuity of images” with their bodies. The performance at DaBY is part of the international project “Wings,” and is positioned as a transit point toward the premiere at Aichi Prefectural Art Theater at the end of October.
This review is composed of the conversations that three members of “Zazie Zoo” – Tomoya Kimura, Musashi Tanno, and Tatsuma Nishizaki – had while walking from Komaba Todaimae to Shibuya, as well as the text they wrote later. The film is composed through the text written by each of them later. The recordings are not only of the works themselves, but also of their realities as spectators and the range of their viewpoints, recorded through their multiple voices. It is difficult to read all the way through, so please read it when you remember.
Ayaka Ono Akira Nakazawa Nakazawa Spacenotblank “Dance Work No. 3: “At the Castle” by Naoya Shiga” Work in Progress
Review by Tatsuma Nishizaki
In writing this review, I pulled out a collection of Naoya Shiga’s short stories that had been lying dormant on my bookshelf at home for some time. It is from the Iwanami Bunko collection, and on the cover it says, “No other essay of Shiga’s has been written in such a “tangible” way as his. It seems that Naoya Shiga himself described his essays as “visible” when praising other people’s writing. If so, then this work may well have been “visible” as well. It may seem strange to say “it seems to be visible” when there are dancers in front of you, but both dance and theater are essentially devices to evoke the “invisible,” and as the name “Space Not Blank” suggests, it can be read as an act to show something in a space with no blanks, something in the invisible. As the name Space Not Blank suggests, it can be read as an act to show something that exists in the unseen, a space without space. The bleak space of DaBY and the localized physicality of the dancers, who seem to be trying to eliminate involuntary muscles as much as possible, completely cancel out the images of death, such as a train accident, an abused rat by the river, and a dead bee, but in fact they seem to lead to a ghostly sense of absence. This made me feel that I was seeing something that I was not supposed to be able to see.
Not only for the eyes, but also for the ears, dance and music were seen as having a feedback relationship with each other. It was as if we could hear the inaudible sounds, or rather, the sounds echoing in the performers’ heads were transmitted to us through their gestures and breaths. （It was like a person suffering from hallucinations, seeing things that cannot be seen or hearing things that cannot be heard.)
Furthermore, upon re-reading “At Jyonosaki,” I was struck by the small amount of text (8 pages), and understood that it could be described as “blog-like” if converted into modern terms. I also felt that while novels can be considered as a single structure, dance is a continuum of moments. And it seemed to me that this was not a literary work but rather a musical work (combined with mmm’s music), an album-like cohesive work.
By the way, if we consider “dance” in Japan, we find that ballet was imported to Japan in the 1910s, and that modern dance was born soon thereafter under the influence of German expressionism, thus creating a strange picture of Japanese dance in which the new and the old have been constructed side by side. This is a strange picture of Japanese dance, in which the new and the old have been constructed side by side. In a book by aesthete Satoru Kimura, he wrote that “contemporary dance is a dance thoroughly devoid of illusion,” but as far as the lineage of Tatsumi Hijikata is concerned, Japanese avant-garde butoh dance seems to have rather actively adopted illusionism (or rather, oriental mysticism). In other words, there is a beautiful perversion in Japanese dance that tries to show illusions by using methods to avoid showing illusions. Therefore, “a corpse propped up on the edge of life” is probably the very term created by this dialectic between modern and pre-modern.
In this way, I feel that the “dance” in this work is also a body devoid of illusions in the contemporary tradition, but that it is a subversion of the illusion of “the experience of the writer Naoya Shiga” or “some kind of body acquired in Kinosaki” that is shown to the viewer through this method. I feel that a perversion is taking place. As I mentioned at the beginning of this article, this is an attitude of trying to show the invisible. Or perhaps this is “physical catharsis” as an answer to the problems of “movement” and “dance” that Japanese dance seems to have.
Author:Tatsuma Nishizaki
Ayaka Ono Akira Nakazawa Nakazawa Spacenotblank “Dance Work No. 3: “At the Castle” by Naoya Shiga” Work in Progress
Review by Musashi Tanno
A short preface.
I wrote it with that in mind, and, well, hopefully, that’s how you’ll read it. I wrote it with that in mind, so, well, hopefully, that’s how you’ll read it.”
Text:
I liked the first part where you put the bottle down. Such an act of “matching” could be categorized as tacky, but
I felt a definite beginning in the act of matching with a good distance from what needed to be done, as if he was a capable businessman. It was dramatic. In this case, dramatic in the amount of theatrical meaning, dramatic.
I felt dramatic from the end as well.
The two of them kept walking. Two people. Not Kenji and Ryoko, for example, nor two bodies, for example.
One of them was dancing hard. He was doing his assigned task, nonchalantly, without excess or deficiency, and with great effort.
A kind of end roll was also played. Toward the end, they stopped dancing.
Before I knew it, they had stopped walking.
These were dramatic, I felt.
But is there anything less dramatic in the beginning and end of something?
I felt that there was a clear language in the movements of the performers, even when they were not moving.
Whether it is movement, imitation, or, well, honestly, I don’t care what kind of language it is. The fact that I could feel it was there was both comforting and somewhat suffocating at the same time for me.
The density was tremendous, and by density I mean consciousness. I consider the word “consciousness” and the word “language” to have similar meanings.
The day I saw the performance was too hot, but it was cool at Dance Base Yokohama. But Dance Base Yokohama was cool.
The occasional breeze that blew around my feet, a moderately cool, refreshing breeze, was pleasant.
Was it cool because it was cool? Was it cool because I had the presence of mind to feel cool? Even though I was feeling suffocated?
Come to think of it, I have been to Kinosaki Onsen once.
Everyone was in their yukata and walking around. I can’t quite remember if it was the hot spring or the heat that made me hot. I couldn’t sleep at night. It was too hot.
There was a river. Maybe it was cobblestone.
I remember walking around in circles.
This is a recollection. I was so pulled in by the title that I struggled to escape from it in the beginning.
I might have thought about running away.
As I soaked in the memories, I felt an escape from the entire staging.
Where did they come from and what are they running from? I have no idea.
Oh, let’s not. I’m not going to elaborate.
The way the individual performers faced the dance was unaffected.
Rehearsal director Yamaguchi’s seasoned involvement, was indifferent.
The framework of both Mr. Nakazawa and Mr. Ono, was indifferent.
I am still under the illusion that I could feel it as if it were real.
I wanted to dance. That’s why I don’t want to put it into words. If I write it down, I won’t be able to dance.
I know you can’t dance well as a result.
I don’t have the technique. So I don’t want to put it into words.
The performers, moving inorganically, nonchalantly, yet intensely, yet restrainedly, continue to dance hard, changing (too simultaneously to be called a reaction) according to each other’s behavior, close to the behavior of quantum entanglement. Like the coordination of sophisticated cooks.
Is there a clear separation between generation and practice?
If, for example, this was all pre-determined movements (whether they were executed is another story), it would have been an enormous amount of practice, and if this was improvisational in some sense, the individual training would have been tremendous.
At any rate,
I was impressed by their attitude.
I still look at the person, not the content.
To the extent that it is expressed in language and at present. That the unconscious may be swayed precisely by the content. It is not my job to bring the unconscious to consciousness, to put it into words.
When I try to write something, gradually a haze begins to form over the dense movements in my language world (or so it seems). Only the temperature is left behind, and it goes away. Leave? No, the temperature is always there. It is also changing. Just far away. It goes away only from sight. Not only the movement, but the entire space.
I thought that if I moved, I would be able to understand, and something appealing to my eyes would appear again, but I couldn’t. It wasn’t that I couldn’t remember them. It was not that I could not remember them, but perhaps because I could not dance them.
Even so, when I tried to reproduce some of the things I vaguely remembered, I was actually more impressed by the posture behind the movement than by the shape or the movement itself.
We all probably set forth, and I agree with, the aesthetics of it, and we carry it out thoroughly. They do not consider excess or deficiency a good thing, dislike agitation, and do things without hesitation.
Maybe this is just because I want to be like that on a regular basis.
That said,
Mr. Nakazawa was keeping a position where he didn’t hit that spinning tree with a sledgehammer.
You’ve got to back off a little more. You don’t remember what we’re talking about.
From Musashi Tanno.
Ayaka Ono Akira Nakazawa Spacenotblank Dance Work No. 3: Naoya Shiga’s “At the Castle” Work in Progress
Review by Tomoya Kimura
Dance piece No. 3: Naoya Shiga’s “At Shirosaki”—Catch up, catch up,
August in 2025 will be insanely hot. It’s so hot, I’m worried about the temperature in Japan, and I don’t think I can greet my 60-80 years old age (I’m 26 at the moment) with a higher temperature, right? Do you? Can you welcome it? Japan 80 years? Let’s write a review. Let’s try to catch up in this room on a gun-hot summer day. It may be a WIP, including deviating from the format of a review.
Who is the first person to say “WIP”?
On August 30 and 31, 2025, Ayaka Ono Akira Nakazawa Nakazawa Spacenotblank and Yo Nakazawa performed “Dance Work No. 3: Naoya Shiga’s “At the Castle”” at the new studio of Dance Base Yokohama in Yokohama, Japan. I was fortunate enough to be asked to review the work, and I attended each session with my colleagues from Zazie Zoo. WIP is like landing on a desert island and breathing in a crawl. The three of them, Hokuto Kodama, Ayako Saito, and Sumi Tateyama, stood on stage, not tracing the events of the original work, but reweaving Shiga’s “continuity of images” with their bodies, an attempt that was as vigilant as an air conditioner that chills you in the summer time.
Rock stars, yo!
First, this WIP began with a “free talk” by Ayaka Ono and Yo Nakazawa. The two artists talked about the events of their residency and their attempts this time. Of course, this could be taken as a time to present the blueprint of the work. In reality, however, it seemed to be a simple and straightforward desire to talk about what they enjoyed in a fun way. They looked like rock stars. The two of them are light and stand still. For some reason, Nakazawa’s socks were different on each side. It seemed like a coincidence, but it was more like an inevitability. I wondered what kind of conversation I could have with these two if we became friends, and fantasized about how they would make it.
Where is this place called Jyonosaki? ?
After a free talk, the three performers began their performance. Hokuto Kodama, Ayako Saito, and Sumi Tateyama, each body has sophisticated and sharp movements, but when copied and pasted, each movement is activated as if the image quality drops by pixels, creating a completely different time. The audience is drawn into the experience of “Where is this place?” and relives the sensation that Naoya Shiga wrote about, not in words, but in the physical differences. Here, I would certainly think that if someone were to talk about his memories of Jyonosaki, I would be donkey-dogged.
The stage space was flat, and lighting and sound effects were kept to a minimum. This restriction worked as an advantage, as the slightest difference in movement gave a strong density to the space. In particular, Kodama’s center of gravity, Saito’s long, extended lines, and Tateyama’s breaths that maintain pauses seem to visualize the three different “ways of staying. The continuity of the events Shiga wrote down in Kinosaki was re-knitted as “the rhythm of different bodies” by these three. So, even though I do not know the three people well, or remember their faces, I remember the rhythms of their bodies very well.
The Perils and Attractiveness of the Concrete
However, because of the WIP, there are still moments when there are “lingering explanations” in the movement sequences. While the moments when what was said in the talk appeared directly in the movement were easy to understand, they also carried a “danger” that diluted the freshness of the discovery. Imagination is limited.
Rather, what was fascinating to me as an audience member was when I was able to witness a time when I could not determine what I was chasing, spilling over from the explanation. That moment is not just a chase, but a chance encounter at the end of a reverse run guided by the roundness of the earth.
Yes, I mean, I want to do the chase,
I’m not doing it,
the time-space on the blueprint,
just makes me do it,
what I really want to see,
is not that,
because,
just go,
because,
if you bother,
Atami, is fine,
this I,
“Atami,”
if you say, I can trigger
this is Atami,
on my own.
Words are
sticky,
sticky,
produce a certain concrete.
Human thought.
Perhaps,
then,
how far away,
can I get,
there is,
a groove,
yes, or,
like being asked,
if not for the auxiliary wheel of words,
how would I respond to this dance?
Can we have silence?
That’s
the body of the audience,
Direct,
As recalled,
Like a mess,
Coincidence,
Now they are asking for it,
Danceability,
The moment of the remarkable bounce, ha,
Which moment is it?
What is theatricality?
Happenings,
Oh, I see, it’s a phenomenon,
Oh, I see, it’s a possibility.
For you, Jyonosaki is not Jyonosaki.
At that time, that time is a chance encounter.
I’m looking forward to the first performance!
The question posed by this WIP was “how to read Naoya Shiga’s novel with the body,” and we believed that the answer to this question has yet to be determined.
But the web of differences created by the three bodies should already suggest “what remains,” and how that web will be rewoven in the premiere, I see, WIP has the efficacy to make the performance something to look forward to.
And, in light of this, it is doubtful that I would have been able to watch the film without the “free talk” that had been included as an introduction to the film. In other words, the time spent on that blueprint, which was left unsettling, was effective. This may diminish the discovery of the movement as more talk is explained, and the adjustment of the amount and positioning of extrinsic information (historical facts and quotations) may be key for the first performance. I would burst out laughing if two people were forever doing free talk at the first performance. And they would be wearing impossible costumes. Imagine that.
In closing, I would like to thank you.
I ain’t gonna do it unless I’m made to do it. I don’t think I’m really making a choice. I have to bet that the coincidence is inevitable. I want to be in the minority and I am the majority, but they are not in conflict. A voice is a voice, a group is a group, and I am me, so if we are going to do this, let’s do it right. The end of forgiveness is at the bottom of the cliff, so I’d like to thank Majilove for this opportunity to be here. ❤️🔥
by Yuya Kimura
Ayaka Ono Akira Nakazawa Nakazawa Spacenotblank “Dance Work No. 3: “At the Castle” by Naoya Shiga” Work in Progress
connecting
This work-in-progress was only a passing point, but for the audience who actually witnessed it, it was an enriching experience in itself. But for the audience who actually witnessed it, it was a rich enough time in itself.
Above all, it is remarkably open. Not a reopening to play the clown. I was happy, including the fact that the creator left it to me to write whatever I wanted.
That is why I feel strongly about it. If I had not come here, I would have missed something.
I wonder how this time will be further rewoven in the premiere.
To be able to witness it here and now is in itself a blessing and a reason to watch for the next moment. Thank you very much.
September 23, 2025
Zazi Zhu
◆Profile
Zazi Zoo
Occurred in the late summer of 2022. A theater team and network with “play” at the core of its philosophy. It began as a shared house for a few Tama Art students, and has continued its activities while having fun changing into the clothes they wanted to wear at the time. Currently, they have two bases, one in Nippori, Tokyo and the other in Yokohama.
Actors, playwrights, directors, stage designers, dancers, choreographers, producers, costume designers, lighting designers, sound designers, NEETs, contemporary artists, university faculty, band members, working people, ding-dong men, rappers, freeters, visual artists, designers, high school students, critics, magicians, painters, swimmers, DJs, and many more. The number of members is expanding.
Zazie Zoo has a “project team” aspect that engages in practical creation and a “network” aspect that creates connections between artists, but the boundaries between the two are vague and ever-changing. Therefore, each member must ask himself the question, “Do I belong to Zazie Zoo or not? In other words, Zazie Zoo is a cultural bathing place created by a paradoxical group form in which the center and the outer edges are thrillingly intermingled.
You,
me,
everyone is Zazi Zoo.
Representative
Agaristi Python
Web site: https: //zazizoo.com/
Tomoya Kimura
Producer/space curator/writer. Co-chairman of Zazi Zoo and representative of Temporary Company. born in 1999 in Kanagawa Prefecture. He runs the multifaceted space “The Cityy” in Nakamura-cho, Yokohama. Crossing theater, placemaking, and editing, he is designing a new relationship between the city and theater.
Musashi Tanno
was born in 1996 in Tokyo, Japan. He was a competitive swimmer from a young age and grew up mainly in the water. After graduating from high school, he moved to land, where he learned the joy of hearing sound and the pleasure of his feet touching the ground, and began to be involved in performing and screening arts. 2025, he is still doing what he can do in various places, starting with what he does not synchronize with what he does.
Tatsuya Nishizaki
was born in 2001 in Hyogo, Japan. Graduate student at Tokyo University of the Arts. Ninth term of the Kuma Foundation. Writes screenplays for Zazie Zoo. I also play drums. I sometimes design flyers. I also draw manga. Recently, I’ve been making video works. I do everything!
▶︎ Ayaka Ono Akira Nakazawa Nakazawa Spacenotblank “Dance Work No. 3: “At the Castle” by Naoya Shiga
