“Music in a continuous swaying motion
Bodies filling space
An endless modular melody is born, reaching nowhere
Thus love and death become impossible.”
— Saburo Teshigawara

Music: excerpts from Tristan und Isolde by Richard Wagner
Choreography & Lighting Design: Saburo Teshigawara
Performers: Rihoko Sato, Saburo Teshigawara
Technical Coordinator & Lighting Assistant: Sergio Pessanha
Costumes: Mie Kawamura

Duration: 60 minutes
World Premiere: 8 June 2016, Tokyo — KARAS APPARATUS

Production
Produced by KARAS
International distribution by International Music and Arts.

Supported by the Agency for Cultural Affairs, Government of Japan, through the Japan Arts Council

Saburo Teshigawara transforms Richard Wagner’s opera — the story of an impossible love and its tragic consequences — into a singular movement language for only two performers: himself and his longtime artistic partner, Rihoko Sato.
Although Wagner’s music is an integral part of the performance, Teshigawara focuses on a more essential and stripped-down dimension of the tragedy.
The two dancers embody the suffering of a love consumed by an insatiable longing that can never truly be fulfilled and that ultimately finds peace only in death. Through their interpretation of these doomed lovers, their bodies become messengers of an otherwise inexpressible sensory experience, capable of conveying an understanding that is entirely emotional and instinctive.