Mitsutake Kasai: Thoughts Since 2020, the First Year of COVID — Voice of the Kasai Family
The first work in the "Power of Dance Project—Family Stories, Past and Present" was presented by the Kasai family, whose members have all been active in the dance world. For the past three years they have continued presenting works as a family. Mitsutake Kasai and his father, Akira Kasai (笠井叡), talk about what they have been thinking during that time.
Mitsutake Kasai
In 2020, the first year of COVID, the world began its battle with an unknown virus. In August that year we were able to present a Kasai family performance at Session House. Originally, before COVID, it had begun with a conversation with Naoko Ito about doing something interesting around the time of the Olympics. But the COVID problem erupted around February of that year, changing the distance between people and forcing many performances to be cancelled. Facing a crisis unlike anything we had experienced, I began making a work, wondering whether we could do something together with the fellow performers closest to me—my family. At that point I wasn’t thinking of making three works, but in the end we made a new work the following year, and another the year after that. By the time I made the second work, I did have the idea of making a trilogy.
The body is a mysterious thing. When we run up against a difficulty, the body has the power to repel it. I think making things means turning that power into creative power. I believe that is the foundation of creative activity. In a sense, perhaps difficulty means the beginning of a new world. Our first work, in 2020, "Releasing Four Arrows at the End of the World," had as its theme how to present the body at the beginning of an unknown world. In 2021, "Beyond the Fog": the world was still enveloped in fog that prevented us from seeing ahead, but far off there was a small light. It became a year in which we gradually learned to adapt to the new systems that had changed so rapidly, and tried to bring something new into being from there. In 2022, "Poem of Joy," the final work in the trilogy. I made it with many different feelings: the joy of standing on stage, the joy of having an audience there to witness it, the joy of seeing a landscape for the first time.
The Kasai family, "Poem of Joy"
What all three works had in common was the question of how to present dance amid the changes in the world brought about by COVID. In 2020 in particular, public facilities and studios closed, and it was a time when even gathering people together was difficult. With the ever-present risk of cancellation, I thought about how to make a work, how to bring it to performance, and what it meant to perform at that moment. Under those circumstances, being able to give three rather unusual performances over three years at Session House, with every performer a member of the Kasai family, was a very significant event for me. If the COVID problem hadn’t arisen, I’m sure I wouldn’t have thought of launching performances like these. I imagine Session House likewise had a difficult time figuring out how to get through this crisis. It introduced online presentation early on and somehow kept performances going without interruption, even with limits on attendance. And the crisis still hasn’t ended; it continues. I have no idea how the world will change from here, but as long as we have bodies, I believe we must keep confronting whatever difficulties come our way.
