a dance, music and multimedia project inspired by the life and legacy of Ryuichi Sakamoto
by Michael Sakamoto and Paul D. Miller aka DJ Spooky
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A unique integration of hip-hop mixology, new music, dance theater, and integrated media visuals, time/life/beauty is inspired by the music and artistry of legendary composer, musician, and activist Ryuichi Sakamoto (1952- 2023), whose long and varied career in multiple genres and media surpassed definition.This project channels the artists’ shared and distinct approaches to interdisciplinary performance, intercultural dialogue and social concerns.
Tracing Sakamoto’s creative, cultural and social concerns, the artists unpack and embody the nuanced connectivity among languages and forms of expression, environment, science and culture. How do shared languages form between creators and communities? How do individual and collective human behaviors influence ecologies small and large? What is the relationship between community, place and the larger environment over time?
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Development Residency
The artists seek hosts for short-term residencies to research and develop elements for a music, dance, and video/media art stage performance that deepens their engagement with project themes. Depending on where and in what context a residency takes place, there also may be more intensive community, cultural or environmental engagement.
Performance: Concert with dance/multimedia
Inspired by Sakamoto’s multi-genre and multicultural artistic vision, the first version of the project will be a concert program with dance and multimedia elements of remixed and reimagined versions of Sakamoto compositions and new original works.
Performance: Dance theater/music/multimedia
A second version of the project will combine dance theater, musical and visual/media-based elements in a hybrid program inspired by Sakamoto’s art and activism as well as selections from the concert program.
Both versions will be adaptable for stage, modular and alternative sites.
Additional activities
Artist talks, master classes, panel discussions and other activities available. Student or community performers may be engaged under some circumstances.
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Recent and upcoming engagements
January 2024 Winter Jazz Fest, New York, NY (showcase)
July 2024 Japan Fest, Levitt Pavilion, Denver, CO (community concert)
Spring 2025 Mt Holyoke College, South Hadley, MA (work-in-progress)
Fall 2025 Production residency (host TBD)
January 2026 Duke Performances, Durham, NC (dance theatre premiere)
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“A commanding performer…a dramatic tour de force.” – Los Angeles Times
“Sakamoto creates expressionist theater that evokes the mysterious, the withering, and the tongue-in-cheek.” – San Francisco Bay Guardian
Michael Sakamoto is a transdisciplinary artist active in dance, theater, performance, media and photography. He is known as an innovator in butoh performance and the philosophy behind it, which inspires his works.
Dedicated to nurturing intercultural dialogue and cultural sustainability through performative and visual methodologies, Michael creates choreographic and narrative performances, media works, and photo essays designed to reveal diverse experiences across geography, language and social boundaries.
Michael’s work has been presented in 16 countries worldwide, including at Vancouver International Dance Festival (Canada), Dance Center of Columbia College-Chicago, REDCAT, Gøteborg Art Sounds (Sweden),TACT/Fest (Japan),Audio Art Festival-Krakow (Poland), Boston Lyric Opera, and many others. Internationally touring works include: Flash, a butoh/hip-hop duet with Rennie Harris; Soil, a dance theater trio with Cambodian,Vietnamese, and Thai dancers; and blind spot, an autobiographical, intermedia solo in collaboration with Christopher Jette.
Michael is also a scholar and educator who has taught and lectured internationally and regularly publishes creative non-fiction and critical essays and academic texts. His book monograph, An Empty Room: Imagining Butoh and the Social Body in Crisis, a critical autoethnography of Michael’s three-decade journey through butoh history, practice, and theory, was released in 2022 by Wesleyan University Press and shortlisted for the de la Torre Bueno Prize for best first book in dance studies. Michael is former faculty in dance, theatre, and interdisciplinary art at University of Iowa, California Institute of the Arts, Bangkok University, and Goddard College. He currently serves as Performing Arts Curator and Asian and Asian American Arts and Culture Program Director at the University of Massachusetts Fine Arts Center.
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“An unforgettable performance…full of fire and comic detail… performed with style and panache.” – New York Times “Oozing across boundaries with all the deliberate conviction of the collective unconscious.” – Newsday
Paul D. Miller aka DJ Spooky is currently Artist in Residence at Yale University Center for Collaborative Arts and Media (2023-2024, extended). He is a composer, multimedia artist, and writer whose work engages audiences in a blend of genres, global culture, and environmental and social issues. Miller has collaborated with an array of recording artists, including Ryuichi Sakamoto, Metallica, Chuck D from Public Enemy, Steve Reich, and Yoko Ono amongst many others. His 2018 album, DJ Spooky Presents: Phantom Dancehall, debuted at #3 on Billboard Reggae.
Miller is known for his international environmentalism efforts, including: an artist residency program on Vanuatu in the South Pacific, one of the nations most impacted by global warming’s rising seas; Antarctica research and resulting Ice Symphony and tour; and participation in the annual Hiroshima Peace Boat project, and his resulting Peace Symphony and tour.
Miller’s large-scale, multimedia performance pieces include Rebirth of a Nation, Terra Nova: Sinfonia Antarctica, commissioned by the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and Seoul Counterpoint, written during his 2014 residency at Seoul Institute of the Arts. His multimedia project, Sonic Web, premiered at San Francisco’s Internet Archive in 2019. He was the inaugural artist-in- residency at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s The Met Reframed, 2012-2013. In 2014, Miller was named National Geographic Emerging Explorer. He produced Pioneers of African American Cinema, a collection of the earliest films made by African American directors, released in 2015. Miller’s artwork has appeared in the Whitney Biennial,Venice Biennial for Architecture, Miami/ Art Basel fair, and many other museums and galleries.
Miller’s books include the award-winning Rhythm Science, published by MIT Press; Sound Unbound, an anthology about digital music and media; The Book of Ice, a visual and acoustic portrait of the Antarctic; and The Imaginary App, on how apps changed the world. His writing has been published by The Village Voice,The Source, and Artforum, and he was the first founding Executive Editor of Origin Magazine.