S20 Hiroaki Umeda October 4, 2007

"The performance space was transformed into an uncanny magnetic field." —Dance

Hiroaki Umeda is one of Japan’s most promising young choreographer/dancers to revitalize the international scene. His ultra-contemporary approach retains traces of butoh and street dance forms even as it explores a radically minimalist aesthetic that flashes between the sublime and the violent, fluid grace and sudden shock waves of movement.

From his current base in Paris, Umeda has created his own company—S20—in which he appears as a solo performer. His actions are subsumed within environments he designs of sparse dramatic lighting, strobing cyber-imagery, and crackling digital soundscapes. In each piece, movement is only one element in intensely physical meditations on space and sensory perception. For his debut here, Hiroaki Umeda performs Accumulation Layout and While going to a condition, which the New York Times praised for the way he "mirrored the pulsing score with an accumulation of motion, starting with his feet and rising gradually to overtake his buckling legs and rubbery torso."

Official Website: http://www.wexarts.org/pa/index.php?eventid=2321