Voice of Session House 2020 — Ryohei Kondo

Ryohei Kondo: “What Has Changed This Past Year?”

March 2021 is drawing to a close, but, to be honest, the pace of my life still has not changed at all from last year. My world consists of dance, classes, and workshops, and almost all of it is built on “contact with people.” Put that way, it might sound like spending time with dogs or other animals, but the “contact” I mean here is the very act of thinking and doing things.

 

After the regular performances of the Ringo Project’s “Origin 3” in mid-February last year, all performances were canceled. Once the state of emergency was declared, workshops were canceled too, and, like everyone else, I settled into a quiet, restrained life. What weighed on me most was “Keep your distance!” This was not an item in my textbook for life, so my body cried out. “No contact!” made me feel as though I had lost about 80% of my life. Back then, the gradual approach of summer actually made everyday life feel more painful. I had always thought I was good at “acting within limitations” and “living through hardship and difficult times,” as on trips and camping expeditions.

 

But, honestly, this world with no way to see what lay ahead completely wore me out. I could not readily come up with “ways to make life work.” Amid all this, ideas began emerging one after another, and I started putting them into practice: “working through ZOOM,” “presenting online,” “streaming videos through Twitter,” “video works filmed at home by members of Condors,” and “writing music.” Honestly, the vitality and wisdom human beings possess are astonishing. Around the world, people started making use of video one after another, proving that they were alive, and I feel that means of expression, particularly dance and music, grew explosively. People dancing at home, performers expressing themselves in nature or in cyber spaces. Everything from the interesting to the sleep-inducing. Nowadays “performances without an audience” has become a normal phrase, but a “performance with no people” is odd to begin with. In fact, we find ourselves floundering without an audience or in front of a camera. “What am I doing!?” Once we have been pushed all the way back to that starting point, we can only look for signs of light: that is what I have been feeling this year. Had the timing been a little different—had there been no internet as we have now, and no television—we would have flocked to the radio, listened voraciously to music, and kept writing diaries of the body. For now, I suppose all we can do is live with everything we have, using the methods available today.

 

In this year’s February “Ringo Project,” Mademoiselle Cinema and Condors performed together, creating a work in real time under the expansive title “Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow.” I was reminded, profoundly, how beautiful the movement and qualities of bodies that actually “are” there can be. All sorts of forms of expression, ways of presenting, and ways of watching are emerging, but I really felt that “live” work, done steadily and patiently, is good. I believe that the things people do, such as romping around, will remain fascinating even 100 or 200 years from now, and will not disappear.

 

Ryohei Kondo

Excerpt from Voice of Session House 2020