Over thirty-five years a great many dancers and choreographers have worked in this building - some for a single evening, some for decades. This page introduces the people most closely bound up with the place: the company in residence, the artists who return year after year, and the choreographers appearing in our 35th anniversary festival.

 

Naoko Ito

Choreographer, dance producer, and the founder of Session House.

 

Born in Kagoshima. In 1971 she joined the Watanabe Modern Dance Company in Tokyo and appeared in a great many of its performances. She went freelance in 1987 and began working independently, and in 1991 established Session House, a small theater for dance, here in Kagurazaka. In the same year she took part in founding the Session House Planning Office, the non-profit body that plans and produces the programme, and began working as its dance producer. In 1993 she formed Mademoiselle Cinema, for which she choreographs and directs.

 

She builds work from the memories of individual dancers, under the keyword "a nostalgia oriented toward the future" - dance that has been described as rooted in life as it is lived. Alongside her own creation she has started a long series of programmes for developing young dancers, and many choreographers of the following generation have come through them. She received the 13th Regional Culture Award in 2005, and the Newcomer's Prize in the dance section of the 63rd National Arts Festival in 2008.

 

 

Mademoiselle Cinema

The company in residence, founded in 1993 as the resident troupe of the theater.

 

The company has continued the touring activity it calls "Traveling Dance," performing in France, Germany, Bulgaria, Austria, Romania, Poland, Portugal, Korea, Mexico, Ethiopia and the United States, among other places. Its dancing - dynamic, with a low centre of gravity, spinning out the memories of girlhood - has been received as a contemporary dance that carries the Japanese physical tradition forward.

 

Naoko Ito creates with the dancers rather than for them, taking each person's memory and body as the ground of the work, and handling concept, choreography and direction. The company presents several works a year as a dance theater built on "the universal glimpsed through the individual." Ito's choreography for "A Strange Place" won the Newcomer's Prize at the 63rd National Arts Festival in 2008, and in 2011 the company took the Audience Prize for best work at the Gryfino international theater festival in Poland, where its distinctiveness drew notice as "dance full of energy from the land of the rising sun."

 

The dancers

Tamami Takenoshita (竹之下たまみ)
Studied modern dance with Yuko Shinoda from the age of seven. Completed the dance education course at Ochanomizu University in 2001; while there she researched regional performing arts, with fieldwork on the Gujo Odori of Gifu and on the traditional arts of Bali. She first appeared in a Mademoiselle Cinema work in 2001 and has taken part in the company's performances at home and abroad ever since, working in recent years as dance mistress and choreographic assistant. A systems engineer by profession, she also builds the company's website.

 

Natsumi Hasushi (蓮子奈津美)
Began with hip-hop and jazz at the age of three, and met contemporary dance at university. She moved to Tokyo and joined Mademoiselle Cinema in December 2014. She also works at the theater as stage manager and sound operator, and independently has danced in works by Wataru Kitao and Ryu Suzuki. Finalist, Yokohama Dance Collection 2017 Competition II.

 

Mayuko Akimoto (秋元麻友子)
Started dancing in her middle-school dance club, continued in a modern dance club at university, and began contemporary dance there, where she met Satoshi Ishibuchi. She joined Mademoiselle Cinema in April 2020, and Team Kamogawa the following October. She now works as a systems engineer in web development, and performs live as an accordionist.

 

Moe Sugawa (須川萌)
From Tokyo. Studied ballet at the Tokyo Ballet School from the age of three, and met Mademoiselle Cinema at fifteen, joining its performances in Japan and on tour in Mexico and Ethiopia. She completed a master's degree at the Graduate School of Media Design, Keio University, in 2020; the research she undertook there on the physiological responses of dancers and audiences, "Boiling Mind," was staged as a performance in 2023. She works for a television production company.

 

Eha Kudo (工藤えは)
Began classical ballet at four, studying with Ryoji Takahashi and Takako Miyagawa, and turned to contemporary dance at seventeen. She entered the dance education course at Ochanomizu University in 2016, studying the expressive arts broadly while travelling widely - taking part in Camping 2017 and 2018 at the Centre National de la Danse in France, and performing at the Korea National University of Arts. She has appeared in commissioned works by Yukio Suzuki, Yo Nakamura and Kim Nam-jin, and joined Mademoiselle Cinema in 2024. She also handles rehearsal filming and publicity, and supports the company's communication on overseas tours.

 

Tomoko Odo (大堂智子)
Began creative dance in middle school, winning prizes at national level. At Daito Bunka University she studied contemporary dance with Satoshi Ishibuchi in the dance club, and appeared in works by Yo Nakamura, by Ikumi Kurosu's company Bushman, by Koichiro Tamura and by Kaho Kogure. During the pandemic she took part in remote performances streamed from each dancer's home, working on the choreography, direction and structure of a sixty-minute piece. She began creating independently in 2023 and was a finalist at the Yokohama Dance Collection Competition II the following year, joining Mademoiselle Cinema in the same year.

 

Ryohei Kondo and Ringo Planning

Raised in Peru, Chile and Argentina. He founded Condors in 1996 and works widely across stage, screen and education. He is artistic director of the Sainokuni Saitama Arts Theater, and received the Medal with Purple Ribbon in 2025.

 

Condors gave their first solo performance at Session House in 1997, and Kondo has been connected to the building ever since - longer, and across more works, than almost anyone. Since 2004 he has been artistic director of Ringo Planning, the exchange project for young dancers that runs here, and in 2026 he brings back "The Coming of the Goats," a piece from the Ringo years of 2007 to 2012.

 

Artists of the 35th anniversary festival

The festival in September 2026 gathers several generations in one programme.

 

Akira Kasai (笠井叡)
Studied with Tatsumi Hijikata and Kazuo Ohno in the 1960s and became a leading butoh dancer. He founded the Tenshikan school to train the next generation, and studied anthroposophy and eurythmy in Germany. Since his return with "Seraphita" he has performed continuously in Japan and abroad, and has been called "the Nijinsky of butoh." His best-known work is "Pollen Revolution."

 

Setsuko Yamada (山田せつ子)
Studied improvisational butoh with Akira Kasai in the theater department of Meiji University, and after going independent has worked chiefly in solo dance in Japan and abroad. She leads the dance company BIWAKEI, has lived in New York and has held professorships and visiting professorships. She received the Japan Dance Forum Grand Prize in 2019, presented "We Are Here Now" in 2024, and a work commissioned by the Korea National Contemporary Dance Company in 2025. She is the author of "Sokudo no Hana."

 

Naoka Uemura (上村なおか)
Born in Kanazawa, Ishikawa. She studied ballet from childhood and began making her own solo work in 1995. Her creation pursues the possibilities of "a single body," under the theme of "discovering and adventuring in the body," and she works actively on workshops and collaborations with people of all kinds.

 

Mitsutake Kasai (笠井瑞丈)
Studied butoh with Akira Kasai and dance with Kota Yamazaki. He has been presenting solo work since 1998, drawing attention for a world of his own that fuses many kinds of dance. He also choreographs and appears as a guest, and spent time in New York as an overseas fellow of the Agency for Cultural Affairs. Winner of the Jury Special Prize at Yokohama Solo × Duo and of the 12th Japan Dance Forum Award.

 

Kim Ito (伊藤キム), Asami Ida (井田亜彩実) and Kaho Kogure (小暮香帆) also appear in the festival's Masterworks programme, each pairing a solo of their own with a young dancer who has taken the piece on. Asami Ida and Kaho Kogure both teach in our weekly classes.

 

The teachers

The dancers and choreographers who teach here week by week are, for many people, the first artists they meet at Session House. Naoko Ito, Ryohei Kondo, Yasuyo Omoto, Sengiku Bando, Taiju Matsumoto, Tomoko Hirata, Tatsukuni Ikegami, Jun Morii, Kaho Kogure, Asami Ida and Yuko Hashimoto teach contemporary dance, ballet, Nihon Buyo and somatic movement research from Monday to Thursday.

 

 

Voice of Session House

Each year we publish Voice of Session House, a set of long interviews with the artists who have worked here - on their practice, on this room, and on what dance is for. The series is published in Japanese; if you would like to read a particular interview, please write to us and we will do what we can to help.

 

Voice of Session House (Japanese)