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(Digital) Lady M - Power

"A little water clears us of this deed"

Created by:
Kanon Hewitt, Hiromoto Ida and Colleen Lanki

Music: For Dreams of Things Which Cannot Be
Composed by Jennifer Butler and performed by Tiresisas (Mark Takeshi McGregor and Rachel Kiyo Iwaasa)

from February 26, 2021 @6PM PST

TomoeArts Youtube Channel

TomoeArts ventures into new territory to create a fully digital performance combining dance, theatre and interactive digital technology. Using Jennifer Butler's stunning composition For Dreams of Things Which Cannot Be and taking elements from the text of the letter scene in Shakespeare's Macbeth the artists work with themes of desire, gender, doubt and fear to explore the heart of woman striving for power.

Lady M was conceived of as a live dance-theatre performance combining Shakespeare's text and the gestures of nihon buyoh. It was inspired from the last choreography of Colleen Lanki's teacher, Fujima Yūko, which was never fully performed. Fujima Yūko had created two choreographies set to jiuta music to depict Lady Macbeth's letter monologue and madness scenes, intertwining them with lines spoken by the weird sisters or Hecate. The piece, titled Lady Macbeth was to be performed in London in September 2001 by a dancer from Japan and an actor travelling from New York. The 9/11 terrorist attack on the World Trade Centre meant the actor (and director) were unable to fly to London, and only the dances were ever performed. Fujima Yūko passed away in 2003, and in 2017 Colleen set out to reconstruct the dances and recreate the full performance, but no video existed, no one had much recollection of the choreography, and all she could find was a few very vague notes and a few photographs. One of the original musicians in the project said to her, "Why don't you just make something of your own?" The artistic plan has evolved through time and pandemic to become a dance-theatre-digital media experiment.



(Digital) Lady M creators:

Kanon Hewitt - interactive digital design - Kanon is a projection and sound designer, stage manager, producer, playwright, and performer from Tokyo, Japan. Kanon creates and performs for various international stages including Vancouver, Tokyo, and Los Angeles. www.kanonhewitt.weebly.com

Hiromoto Ida - performance - Hiromoto studied drama and performance at the Tama Art College, Tokyo and moved to Vancouver where he danced with such groups as Karen Jamieson Dance, Kokoro, Holy Body Tattoo and Battery Opera. He now lives in Nelson where he established his own company, Ichigo-Ichieh New Theatre.

Colleen Lanki - direction & performance - Colleen is a theatre performer, director, choreographer and educator with a career spanning over 30 years and multiple continents. She was based in Tokyo for many years where she studied nihon buyoh and worked in contemporary theatre. She is the Artistic Director of TomoeArts. www.colleenlanki.com