A new work by Kobayashi Moe, who won the Prize of the French Embassy in Japan – Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels, for young choreographers at Yokohama Dance Collection 2024 Competition I and undertook a residency in France the following year.
During her research in France, Kobayashi was drawn to places bearing traces of life and death, including the catacombs and ossuaries beneath Paris, and anonymous burial grounds. Her profound encounters with the anonymity of piled human bones, the physical transformation of the body and the equality of all in death resonated with the themes of her creative practice: the fragility and instability of a body moving inexorably towards its ultimate limit—death. From these themes, she gathers and weaves together the beauty that dance reveals in each fleeting moment.