Kim Itoh

This piece, Kim Itoh’s first solo for eighteen years, is based on the The Sick Dancer, a book by Tatsumi Hijikata, one of the founders of buto, written in 1983. A man comes across a book in another person’s flat. He starts to browse it. While reading it out aloud, playing with the words, but also on his guitar, he changes into a kind of shaman. This process is identical to the discovery of but–o, several decades ago, by Kim Itoh who, fascinated by this work by Hijikata, became a dancer. With this solo, he returns to this crucial moment in his youth and his career as an artist.

Kim Itoh is a dancer, director, choreographer, head of the physical theater company GERO. He became a disciple of butoh dancer Anzu Furukawa in 1987, and founded “Kim Itoh & The Glorious Future” in 1995. He won the Bagnolet International Choreography Competition (France) in 1996, a Shuji Terayama Award at the 1st Asahi Performing Arts Awards in 2002, and the Yokohama Culture Award in 2008. In 2005, he spent half a year traveling around the world and produced The Oyaji Cafe. After taking a ten-year break from creative work, he returned with his new company GERO in 2015. Dance pieces performed to date include A Game Called Family, What Are You to Me?, Dance and talk?or Talk and dance? and Voice! Voice! Voice!. He has been an artist-in-residence at Kanack Hall (Yokohama, Kanagawa).