Dance Moves Cities in Grīziņkalns. contact Gonzo
contact Gonzo (Japan) and Latvian dancers in Grīziņkalns
Meeting point: Koka Riga, Krāsotāju street 12
Saturday, 23rd August at 19:00
Sunday, 24th August at 19:00
Duration 1h
Free entrance
Attention! This is an outdoor event. Please wear appropriate clothing, also in the case of rain.
Authors and performers: Yuya Tsukahara, Masakazu Kobayashi, Takuya Matsumi, Keigo Mikajiri, Dmitrijs Gaitjukevičs, Aldis Liepiņš, Kristīne Vismane, Eva Vancāne, Sergejs Taraseņa, Elīna Lutce, Roberts Muciņš.
The evening will start with a video installation and the centre ‘Koka Rīga’ and will then take the viewers for a walk through the streets of Grīziņkalns. It will end in one of the neighbourhood’s fascinating courtyards.
Artist collective contact Gonzo from Osaka have gained popularity in Japan and around the world with their unique movement vocabulary and physical contact improvisation performances that might look like ‘Fight Club’ with an elegant choreography added to it. The guys from contact Gonzo will work with seven Latvian contemporary choreographers and dancers from the young generation. Their studio will be the Grīziņkalns neighborhood in Riga with its streets, parks and squares. They will aim to realize the project Dance Moves Cities’ ideas of widening the conventional practices and territories of dance and try to use both the visible and invisible parts of this Riga district as their centre for the performance.
Founded in 2006, contact Gonzo is an improvisational performance group based in Osaka, Japan. The collective has developed a specific mode of contact improvisation that borrows from sources ranging from martial arts to internet trends. Based on both physical strength and agility, and trusting relationships within the group, contact Gonzo powerfully balances elements of contemporary dance, performance art, and urban and popular cultures. Dispersing and occupying public buildings, theaters, museums and alleyways around the world, their work is typically a series of arresting encounters that teeter on an edge between violence and tenderness. contact Gonzo has been presented in Japan, Singapore, New York, Moscow, Rio, Reykjavik, Zurich, Budapest and Ljubljana among other places.
Besides being a company, contact Gonzo is also a name of a method they have developed by Masaru Kakio and Yuya Tsukahara starting on 2006.
In recent years contact Gonzo became the focus of increasing attention in both the performing arts and contemporary art scenes that led to participation in international exhibitions and arts festivals and international dance festivals around the world.
Currently contact Gonzo consists of four members with different backgrounds, including Masakazu Kobayashi, Takuya Matsumi, Keigo Mikajiri and Yuya Tsukahara.
Video from contact Gonzo’s performance at MOMA:
The project “Dance Moves Cities” is a series of performances in urban spaces that contemporary choreographers from abroad create together with Latvian dancers. Similar projects with the name Dance Moves Cities are also happening in Terni (Italy) and Krakow (Poland).
Upcoming Dance Moves Cities events and performances in Riga:
August 23 and 24 in Grīziņkalns / collective contact Gonzo (Japan)
September 12 and 13 in Sarkandaugava / choreographer Willi Dorner (Austria)
Dance Moves Cities is a ‘Riga 2014 – European Capital of Culture’ event. Supported by the EU Culture programme, Japan Foundation, EU-Japan Fest, Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Latvia, Foundation Riga 2014, Culture palace ‘Ziemeļblāzma’, Diena
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