Voice of Mitsutake Kasai
Mitsutake Kasai has continued dancing on many stages, including overseas, for many years. Last year his appearances at Session House included “Dance Bridge: Tokyo's Okuni.” This year, as he has done before, he will take on the challenge of dancing all of Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 with a number of dancers in Night Session. He has written about the spirit behind this undertaking.
Aiming for a Year of Dancing the Ninth Symphony — Director, Session House Planning Office General Incorporated AssociationMitsutake Kasai
It is 2025. I get to write here every year. This year I would like to write about the future ahead of us. I encountered dance in my twenties, and it allowed me to meet many people and see many different landscapes. Through meeting dance, I also gained a great deal of experience. I began dancing with hope, but there were times when it became painful, times when I wanted to quit. And before I knew it, I was turning 50 this year. Somehow I have kept dancing without giving it up all this time. That I have been able to continue this far is not down to my own strength alone; it also owes much to the people around me. And there are encounters with places, too. For me, the most important has to be my encounter with Session House. I first encountered this place in 1997, when I rented Session House as the venue for my debut performance. Since then, I have been allowed to dance here so many times that I can no longer count the performances. I have also met so many people through this place. I think a major reason I can keep going is that I have been given a place like this. This is one of the truly important encounters I gained through dance. A few years ago, I too was appointed a director of the Session House corporation. Now I want to think about how, looking towards the future, I can shape both my own dance and this place, Session House.
One thing I am working on from this year is an attempt to return, in a different form, to a project I started here ten years ago called “night session,” in which I performed improvised duets with 12 dancers over the course of a year. This time I will not limit it to duets, but present improvised performances with several people. The main challenge is to offer a format different from the dance performances usually held at Session House. I would like people to enjoy dance with a drink in hand, as they might enjoy musicians having an improvised session.
The first event, in January, featured four of us: Kim Ito (伊藤キム), Yukio Suzuki (鈴木ユキオ), Mayumu Minagawa (皆川まゆむ) and me. This time we used all the movements of Beethoven's Ninth. We brought dance to the familiar music of the Ninth, deciding only on a broad structure; basically everything was improvised. Working this way, I intend to welcome different guest dancers throughout the year and hold these Night Session Live events every other month. I hope to create a place where dancers can connect with each other and also make new connections with audiences. Having held the first event in January, I plan five more this year, in March, May, July, September and November. As for the guest dancers, I would like to have sessions with people from a wide range of ages, from veterans to younger dancers. I am also thinking of structuring every event around dancing all the movements of the Ninth. Its melodies are known to everyone, and the music is accessible to anyone. I have danced all its movements twice before. Beyond that, I have danced to it many times when using just the fourth movement, or just the second. And the more I listen, the more new discoveries I make each time; the more I dance, the more new discoveries it offers. I think it is the fourth movement that is especially familiar to Japanese people, but when you listen, every movement has thrilling, beautiful melodies. That felt like a good match for this Night Session Live project. So I intend to make this a “Year of the Ninth.” Throughout the year I will have sessions to the Ninth with different dancers. By dancing under the same conditions, I hope we can let audiences enjoy different ways of understanding the music, and see how things change again when the dancers change. I will work hard this year with “continuing” as my goal. I will keep working, gathering the new encounters and new landscapes I am sure to find, so that they lead into the future. Little by little, little by little, aiming for a bright future and believing that there are things dance can change, I want to cry out the “Ode to Joy” in 2025. Audiences who drifted away from theatres after COVID have gradually started coming back. So that many more of those footsteps return, we dancers too must think, experiment, and consider how the future can change for the better, and come forward with new things. May Session House continue to be a place from which dance reaches the world, and a place that opens up the dance of the future.
Mitsutake Kasai
Excerpt from Voice of Session House 2024
