Rihoko Sato

After creating her first piece, SHE, staged by the Japanese master Saburo Teshigawara, of whom she is the closest collaborator, Rihoko Sato is pursuing her poetic exploration of the human body with this solo. “IZUMI” means a spring, a source, or can be a female name in Japanese. Rihoko Sato draws up a danced portrait of an existence on the wire, a fragile life which, on emerging from winter, seems to be slowly reborn, or else evaporates with the last snows. For, the dancer becomes the tree on which the melted snow runs down, like a body in communion with nature. Marked by its dazzling intensity, the writing mingles the expression of emotions with the physicality of a body being consumed by passion. IZUMI is an ode with an uncertain figure which is taking shape, while leaving in abeyance the hypothesis of its reality.

Originally from Tokyo, Rihoko Sato trained as a gymnast in Great Britain, then in the USA. In 1995, she took part in Saburo Teshigawara’s workshops in Tokyo before joining his company, KARAS, the following year, becoming his first assistant and one of his most emblematic performers. Since 2018, she has been producing her own pieces, including Monteverdi’s Vespers of the Virgin, with the vocal and instrumental ensemble La Tempête. She has won many prizes throughout her career, including the Japan Dance Forum Award 2007 and the Premio Positano Leonide Massine per La Danza in 2012.