Recent Choreographic works
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Photo by Sam Mason
Stuck in 2020
Supported by the Canada Council of the Arts and The Dance Centre
Stuck in 2020 is a short film that manifests feelings of isolation, and frustration, outcomes of our time in quarantine. Through movement, music, and set design we created a world that depicts what the year 2020 has meant to us. Clala Dance Project thanks all our collaborators, Canada Council of the Arts and The Dance Centre for their support.
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Clala Dance Project
Choreography: Tomoyo Yamada
Dramaturgy: Ana Daria Vieru
Producer: Charlotte Telfer-Wan
Dancers (in order of appearance):
Charlotte Telfer-Wan, Kestrel Paton, Athena Lewis. Jennifer Aoki
Videographer: Sam Mason
Sound: Norasea
Set design: Troy McLellan
Photo by Xinyue Liu
Friday Dinner
Work-in-progress showing at Pandemonium
August 30, 2020
Massey Theatre in New Westminster
Friday Dinner is a dance performance focused on different modes of human movement. The work is a choreographic compilation of everyday gestural movements and those found in codified dance forms. Using videotaped footage of dancers enjoying dinner and sharing childhood memories, we extracted natural gestural movements from the dancer’s bodies. These idiosyncratic gestures were then layered with dynamic, refined, and established dance movements often found in dance institutions and academia. Heavily relying on recorded dinner settings and interviews, the work unravels a complexity of movements, highlighting the aesthetics of both trained and natural human movements and offers potential hybrids between these forms for contemporary performance.
Choreography: Tomoyo Yamada
Dancers: Kevin Locsin, Anja Graham, Shion Carter, Charlotte Telfer-Wan
Performer: Brian Postalian
Sound: Kimia Koochakzadeh-Yazdi
Dramaturg: Brett Palaschuk
Photo by Lula-Belle Jedynak
yane ura
Open Stage at the Dance Centre
February 11, 2020
seams, MFA Spring Show
May 10-11, 2019
A dance work on embodied energies and histories of abandoned objects - whether they are discarded due to malfunction, lost interest or are simply outdated. The work explores personal experiences of attachment, sentimentality and displacement in relationship to commodities and material objects.
Choreography: Tomoyo Yamada
Dancers: Ana-Daria Vieru, Athena Lewis, Charlotte Telfer-Wan
Sound: Stefan Nazarevich
Photo by Kirk Chantraine, The Snipe News
Emergency!!
Powell Street Festival Telethon
August 1, 2020
The Winter Celebrations at the Anvil Centre
December, 2019
Dancing on the Edge Festival
July 5-6, 2019 and more
Originally choreographed in 2012, this comical piece has been performed and re-created several times in Japan. Illustrating the frustration, impatience and hopelessness everyone must have experienced at least once in their lifetime, the artists invites the audience into a moment filled with quirk and humor.
Choreography: Tomoyo Yamada
Dancers: Jennifer Aoki, Kestrel Paton, Tomoyo Yamada, Charlotte Telfer-Wan
Sound: Julian Telfer-Wan
Photo by Rosie Anza-Burgess
Focal Rift
Can Opener
November 16, 2018
Choreography/Performer: Tomoyo Yamada
Music: Kourosh Ghamsari-Esfahini
Visual: Caitlin Almond
Photographer unknown
Femme Fasade
Selected Winning Work at the All Japan Dance Festival in Kobe
Recreated by students in University of North Carolina, School of the Arts
and more
Based on social expectations towards women in Japan, this piece illustrates the emotional conflict I felt moving to the country in my teens after spending my primary years in a western society. There is a famous saying in Japanese "Derukugi wa utareru" (The nail that sticks out gets hammered down). Any deviance is met with resistance, and "Femme Fasade" is an autobiographical piece facing challenges in an unfamiliar society.
Choreography: Tomoyo Yamada
Dancers (Original cast 2013): Megumi Tsuchida, Akiyo Kubota, Chihiro Koyama, Yuki Cho, Kanoko Yamamoto, Risako Iwatani, Fuka Matsubara, Tomomi Mishima, Natsumi Nishioka, Moe Yokouchi, Kana Nakamura, Ai Hirooka, Tomoyo Yamada
Photo by Jessica Schmitt
shimai
REVERBDance Festival in New York
November 4-6, 2016
Inspired by childhood memories and close relationships with each of our siblings.
Choreography and Performed by Chihiro Nukuto and Tomoyo Yamada
Photo by Jessica Schmitt
kikoeteimasuka
Selected work at the All Japan Dance Festival
in 2012
REVERBDance Festival in New York
November 6-8, 2016
Based on the afterworld of Japanese Buddhism, the piece “kikoeteimasuka” was first shown in 2012. The transparent cloth represents a spiritual river “The River of Sanzu” which is told to be dividing us and the deceased.
Choreography: Tomoyo Yamada
Dancers (Original cast 2013): Megumi Tsuchida, Akiyo Kubota, Chihiro Koyama, Yuki Cho, Kanoko Yamamoto, Risako Iwatani, Fuka Matsubara, Tomomi Mishima, Natsumi Nishioka, Moe Yokouchi, Kana Nakamura, Ai Hirooka, Tomoyo Yamada
Photographer unknown
Hungover from my Twenties
Kansai Buyo-Renmei
April 30, 2016
A collaboration piece with dancers from 10 universities, “Hungover from my twenties” demonstrates the social issues of “karoshi” in Japan. “Karoshi”, which can be translated to “over work death” is occupational sudden mortality mainly caused by heart attacks and strokes due to stress.
Choreography: Tomoyo Yamada
Dancers : Asuka Iida, Kao Uno, Eimi Kawai, Riko Shimada, Aya Nakanishi, Ayana Nishikai,
Moe Nishida, Yume Nishimura, Rina Matsumoto, Mai Jyotake, Hana Chono, Ayane Yasunaga, Misaki Nagao, Mizuki Okumura, Urara Wada, Risako Iwatani, Akiyo Kubota, Chihiro Araki, Rina Nakanishi, Sayaka Yamashita