Akiko Ono

Name of artist creator(s) : Ono Akiko – Tokyo Japan

Goals

• create a dance for a site-specific sculpture garden

Beginning with

• Strong thematic impulses

• Clear aesthetic using real time, stillness, extended single images

• Lists of images and tasks to experiment with

Desires

• to develop dance from concept of yin-yang

• to evolve her movement repertoire

Questions

how does sculpture and dance interact? co-exist?

what can the dance do to enhance the viewers experience of the sculpture?

Challenges

• interaction with sculpture without touching it (sculptors do not allow touching)

• to find physical commonalities between the inanimate object(s) and herself

Strategies

• copy the object’s shape, energy, height

• be the opposite of the objects shape, energy, height

• experiment with distance between self and object

• identify formal aspects of the sculpture and translate into dance movement. Shape is round so move in circles. Material is hard yet sparkles. Sculpture is solid into the ground yet it’s energy seems to rise and take flight.

• take regular dance classes to build her awareness and expand skills

Discovery

• that she can alter the space she is dancing in

Development and Skill-building

• evolution of understanding use of Time, especially duration,

• leading to more subtlety of conscious phrasing

• greater range of energy as formal component within dance

Discussion points

• What is the difference between an installation work that evolves over highly extended time and a “dance piece” that has a beginning middle and end?

• When partnering the fixed materiality of an object (sculpture) with unfixed un-material experience of a person dancing-how/what is enhanced through their co-existence?

To practice

• Keep opening up experience to develop range of movement, through classes, workshops, and more.

• When to flow and when to pause, when to gesture and when to inhabit a full bodied shape

• Explore unknown movement forms

What next

Taking the dance being developed for performance in Britain.

Keywords

Yin Yang, Flow.

Biography

Ono, Akiko is an international Japanese choreographer who has performed and made work in Tokyo, NYC and London and is artist director of Akiko Dance Project . 

She trained at Laban Center  Professional Dance Diploma  Course in London and NY State University of Brockport with an MA in Dance. In New York City she worked with  NY choreographers including Mark Morris, Kirsty Simson. Kirsty’s Aikido movement influenced her dance style which  has the flow of "Ki" energy in Taichi and Baguazhang.

Akiko’s dance film " Cell Phone Dance" was nominated at Dance film Festival in Buenos Aires and  has been an archive in New York Performing Arts Library. In 2014, she worked with British dancers  for " Okuni "(Kabuki dancer)  performed at The Place in London and other theatres in Britain, funded by Great Britain SASAGAWA Foundation. Interested in the intersection of sculpture and dance, she has also presented her work at  museum and galleries such as Victoria & Albert museum and galleries in London England. Upcoming in 2022-23 is performance at The Sculpture Park, Surrey, U.K.