A new work by Tamura Nizika, who burst onto the dance scene with “Lecture on harmonizing with the space,” winning the Outstanding New Artist Prize at Yokohama Dance Collection 2025 Competition II. With handmade masks and costumes, organic movement, and underground expression unafraid of taboos, her award-winning work dismantled established conceptions of the dancing body and conventional values. Now, Tamura looks set to push further.
Casting a clear-eyed gaze on contemporary society, her dance brings together visual art—objects and costumes—and bodily expression, drawing on outsider identity, scum culture, the primitive, and a punk rebellion against commercial values. It promises to herald the arrival of a new avant-garde.
PROGRAM
5
NIZIKA TAMURA “We Named It “Earth” (You)”
Dance Connection
LAND BEFORE TIME “Waterkind”
Dance Connection
- 02.06 [Sat] 19:15
- 02.07 [Sun] 19:15
@Yokohama Nigiwaiza Small Hall
NIZIKA TAMURA
"lWe Named It “Earth” (You)"
- Choreography, Performance & Art Direction： NIZIKA TAMURA
NIZIKA TAMURA
An artist born in 2000 who works across the fields of performance, dance, visual arts and fashion. Moving between the underground and mainstream scenes, she creates and presents costumes and objects, while performing at clubs and music events. She won the Outstanding New Artist Prize at the Yokohama Dance Collection 2025 Competition II for her solo piece “Lecture on harmonizing with the space,” which was based on a performance staged at her first solo exhibition in 2024. Her striking handmade masks and costumes, together with movement unconstrained by established dance vocabularies, resonate with the aesthetics of the primitive, scum, and outsider culture, radically questioning prevailing social values.
LAND BEFORE TIME
Waterkind explores the interplay and connection between two bodies without direct physical contact and is inspired by the movements of water, its flows, currents, and shifting forms. The work merges freestyle and popping elements into a meditation on receptivity, proximity, and space. The piece asks how we can experience connection and mutual understanding through improvisation and how vibrations, responsiveness, and subtle energy can bridge distance. Each movement emerges from the previous one, mirroring the cyclical and interdependent nature of water itself.
"Waterkind"
- Choreography and dancers： Joanna Holewa Chrona & Yared Tilahun Cederlund
- Music： Yared Tilahun Cederlund
- Vocals： Ntsika Fana Ngxanga
- Producers： Land Before Time
- Distribution： Nordberg Movement
- *Created with support of the Swedish Arts Grants Committee, the Swedish Arts Council, Region Skåne, NorrlandsOperan and Dalateatern：
- Partners： Aerowaves, Kinosaki International Arts Center (Toyooka city)
- *Aerowaves is Co-Funded by the European Union.：
LAND BEFORE TIME
Land Before Time is an artistic partnership from Sweden, formed by Joanna Holewa Chrona and Yared Tilahun Cederlund. Blending dance, deejaying, choreography, and sound composition, their work explores slow motion, water, connection, and the spaces between movement and music. Rooted in both local and global influences, they create performances that merge streetdance traditions with experimental sound and improvisation. Land Before Time’s piece Waterkind was selected by Aerowaves as part of the Twenty25 Artists, and presented at the Spring Forward Festival 2025. Their work has toured internationally to growing acclaim, reaching audiences across Europe and beyond. Previous and upcoming engagements include performances in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, the Faroe Islands, Lithuania, Holland, Scotland, the Netherlands, Croatia, the UK, Italy, Germany, Luxembourg Malta, and Estonia. Guided by curiosity, nature, intuition, and rhythm, Land Before Time continues to explore how movement and sound can open spaces of empathy and collective transformation.