The Japan Society (333 East 47th Street) announces its Performing Arts Season spanning Fall 2010 through Spring 2011. The upcoming season features a variety of arts disciplines, from the spellbinding audiovisual concert datamatics [ver. 2.0] by Ryoji Ikeda, to the work of renowned actor Yoshi Oida in his comic one-man play Interrogations: Words of the Zen Masters, to the always-anticipated annual Contemporary Dance Showcase. The centerpiece of the season is the New York debut of Kyoto-based Kashu-Juku Noh Theater, offering audiences the opportunity to experience the 600 year-old tradition of noh and kyogen performed back-to-back. The upcoming season also offers a staged reading of the hit Japanese comedy Trance by Shoji Kokami, in an English translation directed by OBIE-winner Ken Rus Schmoll.
JAPAN SOCIETY SCHEDULE SEPTEMBER 2010-MARCH 2011
OFFSITE EVENT: Ryoji Ikeda's datamatics [ver. 2.0]
Co-presented with French Institute Alliance Française (FIAF)
Friday, September 10 & Saturday, September 11 at 8:00 pm
Florence Gould Hall, 55 E. 59th Street btw Park & Madison Aves.
Tickets $18/$12 Japan Society & FIAF members
A mesmerizing audiovisual concert by one of the most radical and innovative artists of the international electronic music scene, Paris-based Ryoji Ikeda, winner of the Ars Electronica Golden Nica prize for his experiments in the field of digital music. Part of FIAF's fourth annual Crossing the Line Festival, datamatics [ver. 2.0] is a concert blending an immense soundscape with astonishing visuals projected on a cinema-sized screen. To generate the hypnotizing music and images, Ikeda feeds raw data through a customized computer program. Part performance and part sound environment, datamatics [ver. 2.0] has been described by INTO Magazine as "reminiscent of constellations or some kind of galactic space, exploring the infinitesimal possibilities of numbers - like stars in the universe." Presented recently at venues such as the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Itaú Cultural in Sao Paolo and AI Hall in Japan, datamatics [ver. 2.0] offers New Yorkers a chance to discover an artist who has made an international splash. For tickets, call Ticketmaster at 212-307-4100 or visit www.crossingtheline.org.
In addition to the concert performances, audiences are invited to visit the FIAF Gallery for Ryoji Ikeda's exhibition, the transcendental, September 11-October 16, FREE.
Yoshi Oida's Interrogations: Words of the Zen Masters
Friday& Saturday, October 8 & 9, 2010, at 7:30 pm
Tickets $28/$23 Japan Society members
Witness a master at work as revered actor Yoshi Oida returns to Japan Society. Recognized for his 30-year collaboration with legendary British director Peter Brook and in recent years for being one of the most sought-after opera directors around the world, Oida brings his solo masterpiece Interrogations to the Japan Society stage. Interrogations is a comic play depicting a test given by a Zen master to one of his students. The test, consisting of a series of questions framed in koans (riddles) that the student must answer correctly in order to "graduate," continues for several days, designed to determine if the student has reached enlightenment. Since its premiere in 1979 at the Avignon Festival, this one-man play with live musical accompaniment has been hailed as Oida's masterwork and has been performed worldwide, with recent stops this summer in Austria and Barcelona. Oida's uproarious performance, acclaimed as "charismatic, provocative, funny," by The Village Voice, is accompanied live by Berlin-based experimental musician Wolf Dieter Trüstedt.
In conjunction with the exhibition, The Sound of One Hand: Paintings and Calligraphy by Zen Master Hakuin, October 1, 2010-January 16, 2011, at Japan Society Gallery.
Breathing Zen: Missoku Breathing & Shakuhachi Master Class
Sunday, October 24, 2010
Missoku Workshop: 3:30-4:30 pm / Shakuhachi Master Class*: 4:45-6:45 pm
Tickets: Missoku Workshop $15/$10 Japan Society members; Shakuhachi Master Class $35/$30 Japan Society members; Missoku & Master Class $40/$35 Japan Society members
Akikazu Nakamura, a master of the shakuhachi method pioneered long ago by traveling Zen monks, introduces participants to missoku, the ancient Japanese breathing technique once practiced by these monks in music and meditation. Nakamura, who trained with shakuhachi master Katsuya Yokoyama, follows the missoku workshop with a master class for shakuhachi players. Observer tickets may be available for these workshops after regular tickets have sold out. *Master Class participants may rent a shakuhachi by calling 212-715-1258.
