PROGRAM
6

Takahashi Harka “How to Use Chopsticks Properly (Or an Expanding Mindmap)”

Dance Connection


Carmen Fumero “A journey to her voice”

Dance Connection

  • 12.06 [Fri] 19:30
  • 12.07 [Sat] 15:00
@Yokohama Nigiwaiza Small Hall

Takahashi Harka

Takahashi Harka, who won the Best Newcomer Award at YDC Competition II in 2023 with her solo piece EAT, is a young dancer and choreographer currently enrolled in a university literature department. In her new work, she aims to explore and deconstruct the concept, “what is choreography?”. Takahashi broadens the definition of choreography beyond just dance, instead considering it as “affordance” (the values that environments offer us), instructions in various contexts, and a mechanism of power that enables these. She questions whether our actions are unconsciously influenced by our environment or objects. She poses the questions to the audience through the body; “Is a national budget choreography?” “Are manners choreography?”

“How to Use Chopsticks Properly (Or an Expanding Mindmap)”

  • Choreography & Direction: Takahashi Harka
  • Performance & Choreography: Kabashima Hajime, Kobayashi Jyuri, Tanaka Raimu, Shimizu Yukina
  • Set design & Choreography: Horikoshi Riko
  • Cooperation: Maruo Teishiro

Takahashi Harka

Takahashi Harka began dancing seriously through her involvement in her high school’s creative dance club and later encountered contemporary dance after entering university. As a dancer, she has performed in works by Tamura Koichiro and asamicro, and has also started creating original choreography. Her work is centered on the realization that “the actions and systems necessary for life are our greatest threats and forms of violence.” In 2023, she performed EAT at YDC Competition II, earning the Outstanding New Artist Prize. Currently enrolled in the literature department at Keio University, she redefines choreography through the interplay of academic input and physical output. Her interest lies in the choreographic aspects of labor and everyday life, and she creates performative works that are not confined to the stage.

Carmen Fumero

© YO

This solo work by Madrid-based dancer and choreographer Carmen Fumero, was created under the mentorship of director Batarita through the Touchpoint Art Foundation Mentor Program in Hungary in 2021. It premiered at the Budapest International Performing Arts Biennale. The performance features stunning lighting and female vocals that evoke a transcendent, majestic atmosphere across time and space, while the dancer performs a quiet yet intensely physical choreography. The piece traverses through emotions of anger and forgiveness, weakness and strength, joy and suffering, anxiety and ease, denial and affirmation. It is a lonely journey that navigates between, and sometimes embodies, these contradictions, heading toward an unknown, hidden place within. All in search of encountering a self yet to be discovered.

“A journey to her voice”

  • Direction & Choreography: Carmen Fumero
  • Mentory: Batarita, Touchpoint Art Foundation’s Mentor Program 2021.
  • Artistic accompaniment: Miguel Zomas
  • Music adaptation and composer: Iván Cebrián
  • Light designer: Alfredo Díez
  • Costume designer: Carmen Granell
  • Subsidy: Embassy of Spain
© Miguel Zomas

Carmen Fumero

Dancer and Choreographer Based in Madrid. Born on Tenerife in the Canary Islands, Fumero obtained her degree in dance from the Conservatorio Superior de Danza María de Ávila (CSDMA) in Madrid. She has worked as a dancer in Spain under prominent choreographers such as Antonio Ruz and Akiyama Tamako , and an array of other dance companies. Since 2013, she has been creating choreographic works in collaboration with Miguel Zomas. Their duo piece Eran casi las dos inspired by Yukio Mishima’s The School of Flesh, won first place at the 29th Madrid Choreography Competition in 2015. Her work Un poco de nadie, which premiered in 2017, has been performed at the Jacob’s Pillow Festival and in theaters and festivals both in Spain and internationally, including in the Czech Republic, Germany, Italy, the United States, Burkina Faso, Taiwan, and Malaysia.