Voice of Session House 2021: Mitsutake Kasai

　Ever since making his stage debut at Session House, Mitsutake Kasai has undertaken several projects here each year. He shared with us the thoughts he has been working through over this past year of the pandemic.

Mitsutake Kasai: “Two Works I Danced During the Pandemic”

 

　I have been coming and going at Session House for over twenty years, and have presented so many works here that I can no longer remember them all. At the same time, it has also been a place that has brought me many encounters.
Among those, meeting Ryohei Kondo was, of course, particularly significant for me. I think the first time we danced together was also about twenty years ago, in a Session House project: the three of us, Ryohei Kondo, Kenzo Kusuda—who now works in the Netherlands and was also a member of Condors—and myself. Dancers grow together with a work, and the work evolves too. I hope we can travel with this work again.

 

　And I will write about one other performance, the Kasai family performance we gave last September. This was the second Kasai family performance, following the one held two years earlier. The first explored how to seek out a way for the body to be in response to our encounter with the unknown virus called coronavirus. The second explored how to present a dance work to this confused world, a world in which there is still no exit in sight. With the emergence of the coronavirus problem, online formats have been introduced into theater performances, and their forms are gradually changing from what they used to be. Session House, too, was quick to introduce online performances. Starting from unfamiliar ground, the staff united to build a system together. In that sense too, this second year has brought changes. The work comprised the latter part of Mozart’s Requiem, followed by Mompou and Sibelius, accompanied by readings by my mother, Hisako Kasai, and photographs by my brother, Nariyuki Kasai (笠井爾示), projected on a screen. Bach’s Chaconne. We performed the Chaconne entirely as eurythmy. Akira Kasai created the forms for us. I danced this nearly fifteen-minute piece as a duo with my brother, Reiji Kasai (笠井禮示). It was a very long piece with a complex structure, so the work was demanding, but we analyzed the music one part at a time, fitted it to the forms, and created the movements. I asked Naoka Uemura and Yuko Asami (浅見裕子) to create a Sibelius duo together. It is precisely in difficult times that we must overcome our difficulties. And I believe that the body possesses that power. We borrow strength from the person beside us, then share strength with the person beside that person. I think that is how a work spreads.

 

Mitsutake Kasai

Excerpt from Voice of Session House 2021