Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on January 2010

From the flanks of Mt. Etna in Sicily to Japan’s Mt. Fuji comes Italian butoh dancer Tiziana Longo. Foreign practitioners of Japan’s avant-garde postwar dance form are becoming more common, and Longo’s route from classical ballet to contemporary dance and then butoh is not an unfamiliar one. Discovering butoh at the University of Bologna’s performing artist program, Longo won a Japanese government scholarship to come here and study under renowned father-and-son team Kazuo and Yoshito Ohno. Appropriately for Valentine’s Day, the name of her piece is Seppun, the old Japanese word for “kiss.” She calls it an “homage to everybody from West and East who has something to forgive or be forgiven for, a little present from St. Valentine to everybody.”

Bacio
Performance by Italian dancer Tiziana Longo combining butoh and contemporary dance. Feb 14, 7:30pm, ¥2,000 (student)/¥2,300 (adv)/¥2,500 (door). Nakano Terpsichore. Tel: 090-8540-6460.