Michikazu Matsune & Martine Pisani. - Kono atari no dokoka (Somewhere around here)

Three artists meet on stage to revisit their early careers. Mapping how artistic creations and biographies interweave, they embark on a journey through time and space in search of the past and its meaning today. Touching and infused with subtle humour.
In exploring the remnants of dance beyond the stage, the collaborative project Kono atari no dokoka (Somewhere around here) navigates the artistic relationships of Japanese-Austrian performance-maker Michikazu Matsune, French choreographer Martine Pisani, and Dutch painter-performer Theo Kooijman. Focusing on their activities from the 1980s and 1990s, this venture examines the interplay between archives, personal memories, shared anecdotes, and imaginations.
Martine Pisani’s poetic and humor-infused body of work, initiated in the mid-1980s, intertwines movements, words, and performative acts. Michikazu Matsune, blending documentarist and conceptualist approaches, collaborates on this project, recording the trio’s shared history. Theo Kooijman, Pisani’s real-life partner and longtime performer, reimagines her early works for the project.
The fictional setting of Kono atari no dokoka brings the spectator to Japan, inviting reflection on local and global contexts and histories. The performance weaves together anecdotes from the trio: Pisani’s encounters with choreographer Odile Duboc, Kooijman’s arrival in Paris and fascination with tango, and Matsune’s youth in Kobe and subsequent move to Europe. Pisani’s life took a dramatic turn during this period due to an illness, adding another layer to the collective memory.
From Kobe to Marseille, Paris to Vienna, the performance constructs a composite present from personal stories, blending simplicity, poetry, humor, and tenderness. Kono atari no dokoka becomes a journey through time and space, revealing a shared history that lingers in the gaps and universality between continents, generations, and individual narratives.
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