Messages for the 35th Anniversary

For these 35 years, Session House has been a gateway for dancers, a cathedral from which dance is preached, and a home that dancers can always come back to. I know of no other theatre that has gone on shaping dance the way this one has.

To 35 miraculous years.

Session House lays bare the light and the shadow that the times contain, and puts its questions to the present lightly but sharply. All kinds of people gather and cross paths here, and I am captivated by the sure power of expression that carries memory and hope into the future through dance.

A pleasant culture shock. I will go on expecting more.

At some point we had come to think that "the body" meant the state of our organs and how much we weighed. What Mado made me realise is that "the body is myself."

Every body is beautiful. Its movement never fails to move me.

Congratulations on the 35th anniversary of Session House.

I am delighted to hear that UDC is still going. Even now, when I close my eyes, I remember those days as vividly as if they were yesterday.

May it continue for many years to come.

The place where I started running again. I love that floor.

Congratulations on 35 years of Session House.

I am truly glad that my own work has become one of the many layers in the history of contemporary dance that has built up here.

I look forward to working with you in the years ahead.

Congratulations on the Session House 35th Anniversary Festival.

Thirty-five years have gone by in a flash. Thirty-five years ago I was bouncing around on my own two feet… now I go to Session House to watch dance in a wheelchair, supported by the people around me.

When I watch a dance programme put together by Takashi and Naoko Ito, my own body starts to dance. My thanks and a toast to the Itos❤

Heartfelt congratulations on your 35th anniversary.

I have the deepest respect for your many years of work, and for all you have achieved and contributed.

How many young talents have taken flight into the world from this space? I am simply filled with admiration.

Without this place, Condors would not exist.

Which is to say that hundreds of thousands of people in this country would have been left carrying their difficulties alone.

Session House, the starting point of many kinds of happiness. Thank you.

Congratulations on 35 years of Session House.

Thank you from my heart for going on offering wonderful works, encounters and a place to dance. May this place, which showed my students who aspire to dance how deep and how wide expression can be, go on shining.

Session House appeared all at once on the steep slope of Kagurazaka, standing perfectly upright - like a wedge driven in by an angel's hammer, like an ancient spaceship that had crossed time and space to make an emergency landing.

Like a single dancer rising quietly out of the half-dark, it is a special place and a special phenomenon, moving gracefully between the far side of the blue sky and the deepest part of the earth.

And then there are the dear people who gather there quite naturally. Session House is the home of my heart. Congratulations on 35 years!

I started taking Horton technique and ballet classes not long after Session House opened.

A great deal of time has passed since then, and I am truly glad that we are still close.

Takashi and Naoko Ito are my dance father and mother! Let us keep dancing, in good health, with heart and body.

Congratulations on 35 years.

Session House is where I started, and it feels like my family home. Fourteen years ago I presented a piece at the 21 Festival with Come On Wolf, a dance company of primary school children. Ever since, I have been watched over and brought up here with the warmth of a family home.

It is not merely a place to perform. It is a place that raises people and lets them take flight. I feel fortunate to have found somewhere so precious. I look forward to its continued growth and to the next generation of dancers it will discover.

I secretly call it hideaway dance - dance watched shoulder to shoulder with the person next to you, in a basement theatre. And yet that dance reaches out to society and to the world.

I want the people who should see this one-of-a-kind place to know about it, so I work on productions remotely from abroad. I am glad to be walking alongside Session House.

Congratulations on 35 years.

At a time when what I did had no name yet - "not butoh," "not dance" - you opened this place to me, and from there I opened myself up, little by little. I feel very fortunate that we can still work together like this today.

I will come to Kagurazaka again, for the next challenge.

For the 35th anniversary of Session House.

"The pleasure of the king of the gods at play was Tanz" - that, it is said, is what old Mr Pipplitz, director of the Theater Odeon in Vienna, let slip after seeing Mademoiselle Cinema on stage.

May Mado travel again next year.

Into the clouds a bird flies - carrying, perhaps, the seeds of flowers.

For me Session House is a precious harbour that I can always come home to.

I now have four children, and the six of us take dance and music all over Japan. We can do that because of the heart and the body I built at Session House, with Naoko and Takashi.

With more gratitude and love than words can say! Many, many congratulations on 35 years!

The family home of every dancer, with many windows that open onto the world.

In this "curious place" where you can adventure safely, I have been moved by so much dance and by so many encounters, and that richness still supports me today.

I am grateful that Session House has been here for 35 years.

Congratulations on 35 years!

My first time at Session House was as the video operator for a performance held in the 2F gallery (laughs). I never imagined then that I would one day be looking forward to a 35th anniversary like this!

When I was young and wishing that I could somehow make my living as a dancer, Session House always welcomed me kindly and warmly, and gave me a push forward.

From 35 years ago - and still today! - I always hope that this place, which feeds so many dancers heading into the wave that is Japanese contemporary dance and gives them the courage to take on a challenge, will go on influencing the next generation too!

By the way, my recommended spot in Tokyo is "Session House in Kagurazaka"!

I went there so often that I could have found it blindfolded, by smell alone (laughs). It is where my life in dance began.

It gave me courage and things to learn when I was setting out to be a dancer, and it brought me wonderful encounters. I can still go on dancing because this place was here.

A precious place, like my family home - congratulations on 35 years!

So many dancers have danced and passed something on at Session House, and I am one of them. I am a little away from the stage at the moment, but this is a place I want to come back to.

Do drop in! Even if you are not a dancer, meet dance and the people here and you are sure to fall in love with the place.

Happy 35th birthday, Session House! This is Negishi, head of UDC 4th.

It is no exaggeration to say that my memories of Session House are as vivid as yesterday; it was the time in my life when I stretched myself the furthest.

A big YELL to everyone still dancing in that wonderful space, and to Session House! Even from far away, my voice will reach you.

When I first encountered Session House, I was moved to find a place already doing, right in front of me, what I had imagined doing thirty years later. I think that first impulse alone carried me forward.

In those days it was normal for dancers to help with the get-in and the get-out, and there was a sense that the creator, the performers and the crew all made a production together, as one. I feel that the way we talked to each other during the work showed in the performance itself.

It was not only the day of the performance: there were times when production work and grant applications were done by whoever was able to do them.

In the 1990s the internet was still limited, and performances and workshops were publicised mainly by post and by flyers inserted at other theatres. Going out to insert flyers meant meeting more familiar faces and getting to know stage doors - looking back, they are happy memories.

For me Session House is an irreplaceable place, where I met human warmth and was able to face my own expression.

My solo was not coming together before a Mademoiselle Cinema performance, and Naoko stayed up late into the night creating it with me; we all sat around a table together after the big year-end clean. I remember these things as if they were yesterday. I met so many dancers here, and looking back now, it was the time of my life when I danced the most.

Many congratulations on 35 years. May Session House always be a place dancers can turn to.

When Mademoiselle Cinema came to Tanami Theater, it felt as though the birds chirping outside had come in through a window - a "mado" - thrown suddenly open, and had sung for us while dancing their steps. It was like a dream.

We are listening closely, looking forward to the song from the great tree that is Session House echoing through the forest for years to come.

The travelling dance of Mademoiselle Cinema is a dream stage: an unbroken flow of intense physical expression, composed with delicate music into a story that calls up deep emotion and empathy. At its heart there are always the metaphors of travel, memory and dream.

A toast to 35 years, together with the memory of Mado!

None of us can live alone.

This moment exists thanks to the past and the future that wrap it warmly. This one place exists thanks to the energy of the whole world - of the whole universe.

Thirty-five years in Kagurazaka connect to the next 120 years in San Diego, Korea, Bulgaria and Wuppertal.

Thirty-five years is the same span as my own encounter with contemporary dance and my fascination with it.

In that time Session House has tickled the creativity of many artists, welcomed them in and sent them out into the world.

I have deep respect for that journey. Please go on being a place of creation that stimulates the times.

After I graduated from university and came to Tokyo, the first stage I stood on was Session House, for the very first Condors production.

Almost thirty years have passed since then, and Session House has helped me countless times - and will go on doing so.

This is a warm place, like a family home you can always return to. May it go on being the "family home" of many dancers.

I have been involved since my student days - six years already - and I am very grateful still to be connected to this place.

Through dancing, one era is spun into the next; for me Session House is a warm home. I hope we can go on spinning dance together.

How many bodies, I wonder, have been born here?

The air is dignified and has weight; it clings to the skin, and I am always nervous. That is exactly why my heart races.

I hope this place, where "memory and future" come rushing in and where challenge meets encounter, will go on spinning countless dances.

The theatre that produced twenty years of relationships.

In my student days it was the turning point for UDC and for my solo work; when I joined the dance course at Shobi University in my thirties, my first presentation was a performance at Session House as well. It has since become a popular course with many students, and we are passing on this theatre as a gateway for dancers.

Congratulations on 35 years of Session House‼

Special places that live on in fond memory, places I was able to see with my own eyes, are disappearing like words turning into wind. In the midst of that, Session House has stood unchanged for 35 years, and I think of it as a precious, endangered place.

Its unwavering stance from the very beginning, and the work done at the close, face-to-face distance of a small theatre, must be what has laid 35 years of track.

I am grateful to have been even a small part of this train journey; it was an exciting one.

May this precious place last forever❗I truly hope that the blue building of Session House, in the back streets of Kagurazaka, will keep its form, as it has until now and from now on❗

Session House really is a HOUSE - a home - and Naoko and the staff are as warm as family.

There is kindness and a sense of safety here, and it spreads to the performers and to the audience, so that everyone becomes part of the Session House family.

This is a one-of-a-kind place. It is a wonderful thing. Congratulations on 35 years!

I have borrowed the gallery many times for photography exhibitions, hina doll exhibitions and my "Talk Meetings," and I have borrowed the studio for events several times as well.

For me Session House has become an essential place for my work.

Congratulations on 35 years!