If you took a handful of aspiring Japanese contemporary dancers and blended them with a few members of Tanztheater Wuppertal — the world-famous German troupe formed in 1973 by the modern dance icon Pina Bausch (1940-2009) — what kinds of artistic chemistry would you get?
To find out, French choreographer and dancer Fabien Prioville, who formed his own company in 2006 after seven years with Tanztheater, is now staging his "Soma" project at the Owl Spot public theater in Toshima Ward, Tokyo.
Since his first visit to Japan in 1995 with Montreal's avant-garde La la la Human Steps troupe — when, he said, "I felt I was on another planet, as I didn't understand anything" — Prioville, 42, has worked with icons including Josef Nadj and the radical U.S. performance artist Davis Freeman. Sometimes with his Japanese wife, Azusa Seyama — a Tanztheater dancer since 2000 — he has also led dance workshops here.
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