Choreography Saburo Teshigawara
Dance performance Saburo Teshigawara, Kei Miyata, Rihoko Sato

Minus 273 degrees. Everything freezes little by little, everything becomes silent and motionless… absolute calmness. Through movement, Saburo Teshigawara seeks to reproduce the amazing process that leads to “Absolute Zero”.

“Absolute Zero” is a work in three parts, which are introduced by three videoed prologues. Two solos divided by a duo; three successive phases in the reflective journey of this master of dance. The first image, the beginning, a glorious morning tickled by a light breeze. Saburo Teshigawara appears out of the blue, rends the air, performs movements with vertiginous speed and then reaches a point of immobility and of no return.
On stage, two bodies which, with the first notes of a soft piano melody, are filled with serenity. Almost unreal, Kei Miyata and Saburo Teshigawara perform a fluid and dynamic duo. Their energies collide, intertwine in harmony with the music and the air that surrounds them, then dissipate into space.

The final part follows… total chaos. The video images accelerate, become warped, are ripped apart. In the foreground, Saburo Teshigawara is driven by his body in a frenetic tourbillon, oscillating between static poses and unbelievably fast steps, and vice versa. He performs a never-ending dance until the choreography almost dissolves. Ultimate scene: a glimmer of hope is rekindled with the prospect of a better future.

In this interminable quest of “Absolute Zero”, Saburo Teshigawara, resolutely focused on the future, achieves an explosive mixture of high-tech and the sublime beauty of dance.

Source : Maison de la Danse - programme

Credits

Chorégraphie Saburo Teshigawara
Costumes, décors et scenographie Saburo Teshigawara
Direction technique pour la compagnie Shun Ito
Direction technique Graham Elstone
Lumière designer Saburo Teshigawara
Régie lumières Sergio Pessanha
Son Jim King
Régie plateau Monika Schumm
Direction musicale Saburo Teshigawara, Kei Miyata
Montage vidéo Shun Ito, Saburo Teshigawara, Ravi Deepres
Danseurs Saburo Teshigawara, Kei Miyata, Rihoko Sato

Video direction : Charles Picq
Production : Maison de la Danse

Durée : 2h00

Updating: August 2012

Saburo Teshigawara began his unique creative career in 1981 in his native Tokyo after studying plastic arts and classic ballet. In 1985, he formed KARAS with Kei Miyata and started group choreography and their own activities. Since then, he and KARAS have been invited every year to perform in major international cities around the world. In addition to solo performances and his work with KARAS, Teshigawara has also been receiving international attention as a choreographer/director.He has been commissioned by many international Ballet companies such as the Paris Opera to create repertoire pieces for the company. Teshigawara has likewise received increasing international attention in the visual arts field, with art exhibitions, films / videos as well as designing scenography, lighting and costume for all his performances. Teshigawara's keenly honed sculptural sensibilities and powerful sense of composition, command of space and his decisive dance movements all fuse to create a unique world that is his alone. Keen interests in music and space have led him to create site-specific works, and collaboration with various types of musicians.

Besides the continuous workshops at the KARAS studio in Tokyo, Saburo Teshigawara has been involved in many education projects. Recent young members of the company KARAS are from the project "Dance of Air", an educational project bringing out a performance as a culmination of a year-long workshop process, produced by the New national Theatre Tokyo. S.T.E.P. (Saburo Teshigawara Education Project) has been initiated since 1995 with partners in the UK, also in the same style as "Dance of Air". In 2004, he was selected as the mentor of dance for The Rolex Mentor and Protege Arts Initiative, to work for one year with a chosen protégé. He is a professor from 2014 at Tama Art university, department of Scenography Design, Drama, and Dance. 2006-2013, he taught at the College of Contemporary Psychology,St. Paul’s(Rikkyo) University in Japan. Through these various projects, Saburo Teshigawara continues to encourage and inspire young dancers, together with his creative work.

Source : The company Karas 's website

More information : st-karas.com