Credits
Concept & artistic direction Tomoko Mukaiyama
Choreography Dunja Jocic in cooperation with Spellbound Contemporary Ballet dancers
Choreographer Assistant Alessandra Chirulli, Luca Cacitti
Performers Tomoko Mukaiyama (piano), Spellbound Contemporary Ballet, Sarah Murphy (dance)
Music Yannis Kyriakides
Costumes Slavna Martinovic
Set design Toyo Ito & Associates, Architects + Yoko Ando
Light artist Tanja Ruehl
Technical director Yutaka Endo / LUFTZUG
Light & sound engineer Yuji Tsutsumida / WHITELIGHT
Producer Tomoko Mukaiyama Foundation
Coproducers Spellbound Contemporary Ballet (IT), National Taichung Theater (TW)
Associated coproducers Dance New Air (JP)
Partners Transart Festival (IT)
Support Fonds Podiumkunsten, Stichting Ammodo
Special thanks to Multus, BIGI, Ambassade van het Koninkrijk der Nederlanden in Tokyo. Speaker system supported by Taguchi
Performance dates
8 September 2016 (pre-premiere) Transart, Bolzano, Italy
1 and 2 October 2016 (world premiere) National Taichung Theater, Taichung, Taiwan
8, 9 and 10 October 2016 Dance New Air Festival, Tokyo, Japan
La Mode is a follow-up to the Pa|ethos project launched last year in which Spellbound participates to international co-productions together with highly renowned protagonists in the performing arts sector. This new way of working and producing comes to broaden and enhance the existing projects and activities. It gives a dimension of enlarged production house in which art forms and expressions nourish the renewed identity.
Tomoko Mukaiyama is a Dutch-Japanese performer, visual artist and concert pianist. As a pianist she adds new dimensions to the concert space by integrating performance, installation art and fashion. This multimodal artist creates offbeat contemporary art projects that push the boundaries of the classical music domain.
Tomoko Mukaiyama is currently in the process of creating La Mode, her most extensive and prestigious project to date. It is an installation performance with ten dancers, a pianist and an architectural installation built around the theme of fashion, today’s modern religion.
La Mode deconstructs the codes of the fashion world to examine identity in our time and comment on consumerism, materialism and fetishism. It is a theatrical exploration of the world of fashion through music, dance, body, space and apparel – and reflects Mukaiyama’s personal sense of the meaning of fashion and presents her vision on what fashion does to us, the audience. The premiere of La Mode will be the grand opening of the National Taichung Theater in Taiwan on 1 & 2 October 2016.
International collaboration
Tomoko Mukaiyama has assembled a wide-ranging group of international artists who excel in their chosen fields. The preparatory creation process is a challenge for all the artists involved: composer Yannis Kyriakides, costume designer Slavna Martinovic, choreographers Mauro Astolfi and Dunja Jocic, the dancers of Spellbound Contemporary Ballet, architect Toyo Ito, textile designer Yoko Ando, lighting designer Tanja Ruehl, dancer Sarah Murphy and particularly Tomoko Mukaiyama herself, the pianist and the director of La Mode. Working collectively, they are creating an exceptional event that spans installation and theater performance, combining dance, music and performance in equal measure.
World renowned Japanese architect Toyo Ito and his firm designed the National Taichung Theater.
Specially for La Mode Ito is also creating a large-scale installation together with textile designer
Yoko Ando. For Ito this is his first work as a stage designer during his career as an architect.
Opening National Taichung Theater
The premiere of La Mode is the opening performance for two successive days at the Grand Opening of Taiwan’s first big opera house National Taichung Theater, designed by Toyo Ito. Toyo Ito & Associates, Architects has been working on the design and construction of this theater and opera house for the past ten years; the forms they used are inspired by nature and the human body.
Following the performances in Taichung La Mode will travel to Tokyo’s Dance New Air festival for three performances. La Mode will be performed in the Netherlands at several leading festivals in 2017.
Fashion exposed
La Mode sheds new light on fashion’s effects, both on individuals and on society as a whole. The performance explores power, sex, desire, self-expression and the social codes around fashion. The audience gets to see fashion for what it is: a pure power game. Rather than by verbal analysis, or focusing on the subjective interpretation of one’s own clothing, the audience experiences how trends and the delusions of the day, turn fashion into a phenomenon you can look at critically. The fashion victim is stripped to his complex/superficial core. We can laugh and feel with him – and with ourselves. Because voluntarily or involuntarily we all are followers of fashion; we, too, stand exposed. It is a confronting experience but also a liberating one.
