Pappa TARAHUMARA, Zuni Icosahedron (Japan, Hong Kong)
Grass Labyrinth by Izumi Kyōka
Koike Hiroshi, Danny Yung
Koike Hiroshi, Danny Yung
Koike Hiroshi, Danny Yung, Fukushima Naomi
Vivienne Tam
Sugaya Masahiro, Pun Tak-shu
Koike Hiroshi, Yeung Chi Kuk
Sasaki Naruaki
Tanaka Masato, Miyaki Aki
Moriwaki Hiroyuki
Sekine Yukiko
Ogawa Mariko, Matsuhima Makoto, Suzuki Mio, Shirai Sachiko, Miura Hiroyuki, Teranishi Ai, Sekiguchi Makie, Yeung Chi Kuk, Dick Wong, Pun Tak-shu, Victor Ma
1996
93 minutes
About the performance
This production is a collaboration between Japanese performing arts company, Pappa TARAHUMARA and Hong Kong based international experimental theater company Zuni Icosahedron. The production is an adaptation of a supernatural story written by Izumi Kyōka. The story was illustrated on stage by utilizing illusionary elements from Chinese culture, Water, Moon, Mirror and Flower. The physical expressions of the performers from both countries create a synergy and enhanced with light and video, it portrays the supernatural quality of the other world.
Pappa TARAHUMARA
Pappa TARAHUMARA was a Performing Arts company founded by the director, Koike Hiroshi in 1982. The company was dissolved in 2012. What made Pappa TARAHUMARA as distinctive and extraordinary from the other theater companies is their flexibility and synergetic method of their creative process. They utilized dance, play, music, and art to present Performing Arts, and attracted many audiences and recognized internationally. Talented artists from different fields were gathered at Pappa TARAHUMARA to create an extraordinary production every year. And every production represented the director’s own perception of the world.
Zuni Icosahedron
Founded in 1982, Zuni Icosahedron is the epitome of experimental theatre in Hong Kong. A Hong Kong based international experimental performing arts company, Zuni is a non-profit charitable cultural organization. Zuni is one of the nine major professional performing arts companies in Hong Kong directly supported by the government, and a venue partner of the Hong Kong Cultural Centre since 2009. As a premier experimental art company, Zuni has produced more than 200 original productions of theatre and multimedia performances, and been invited to more than 80 cities around the globe for cultural exchange and performances. With the support of its members, and under the leadership of the Co-Artistic Directors, Danny Yung and Mathias Woo, Zuni has been active in video, sound experimentation and installation arts, as well as in the area of arts education, arts criticism, cultural policy research and international conferences and cultural exchanges. Over the last two decades, Zuni has been undertaking the mission of developing and preserving Intangible Cultural Heritages (Performing Arts).
Koike Hiroshi
Founder of Pappa TARAHUMARA (1982–2012). He wrote, directed and choreographed 55 productions with Pappa TARAHUMARA, leading a generation in Japanese performing arts to cross genres of drama, dance, art and music. In 2012 he launched the Hiroshi Koike Bridge Project (HKBP) with the mission of producing collaborative projects based on education, dissemination and creativity. Under HKBP, Koike has written, directed and choreographed 21 productions around Asia. Koike has created work in 10 countries and his productions have been performed in over 40 countries. He has been invited to collaborate with artists around the world. His workshops that focus on reclaiming the physical body have been presented to professional artists as actor training and to the general public for developing creativity in both Japan and overseas. He served as the Artistic Director at Tsukuba Cultural Foundation, Chairman of Asian Performing Arts Forum, Committee Member of Japan Foundation (2005–2011). He is a professor at Musashino Art University, where he is the first theater director to be appointed in the Department of Scenography, Display and Fashion Design. He is the principal and founder of Performing Arts Institute (P.A.I.), an educational institution for developing artists. He is the author of two books. A collection of essays on the intersection of art and society entitled Listen to the Voice of the Body and his theory of direction entitled Performing Arts Theory – “Fūshi Kaden” for the 21st Century. His first anthology of plays entitled Journey to Night and the End of the World was published in 2018.
Danny Yung
An experimental art pioneer and one of Hong Kong’s most influential artists, Yung is a founding member and co-artistic director of Zuni Icosahedron. In the past 40 years, Yung has been working extensively in diverse fields of arts, including theatre, cartoon, film, video as well as visual and installation art. Yung has been involved in over 100 theatre productions as director, scriptwriter, producer and/or stage designer. His theatre works were staged in multiple cities across the world. In 2008, in response to a commission from the Hong Kong Arts Festival, he created Tears of the Barren Hill, a theatre work reflecting on the innovation of traditional Chinese theatre and the institution of cultural exchange, which earned him the Music Theatre NOW Award of the International Theatre Institute (ITI). In 2010, at the Shanghai Expo, Yung, in collaboration with the renowned Japanese theatre director Satō Makoto, showed The Tale of the Crested Ibis, a cultural exchange project which combined, for the first time, elements of noh and kunqu theatres as well as traditional arts and cutting-edge (robot) technology. The annual Toki Festival, curated by Yung since 2012, develops the concept of the Crested Ibis, or Toki, in an effort to enrich young kunqu performers’ experience and promote exchanges between contemporary and traditional performing arts in Asian regions. The artist keeps a close eye on the arts and cultural policy and on education development in Hong Kong and the Asia-Pacific region. He currently serves as chairman of the Hong Kong–Taipei–Shenzhen–Shanghai City-to-City Cultural Exchange Conference and a member of the Design Council of Hong Kong. He was also appointed the inaugural Dean’s Master Artist in Drama of the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts in 2013, and he on the Management Board of the HKICC Lee Shau Kee School of Creativity and the advisory boards of the Department of Cultural Studies of Hong Kong’s Lingnan University and the School of Drama of the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts. In 2009, Yung was awarded the Cross of Merit of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany in recognition of his achievements and contributions to cultural exchanges between Germany and Hong Kong.
