Voice of Naoko Ito
Naoko Ito, who has continued to lead and choreograph for Mademoiselle Cinema, Session House's resident theater company since 1993, speaks about the feelings she has invested in these 30 years.
Naoko Ito: “Thirty Years of Mademoiselle Cinema”
Looking back, it passed in the blink of an eye. While we were in the midst of it, these were 30 years of giving our all at every moment. In 1993, a group of women with a shared aspiration came together to launch the activity called “Mademoiselle Cinema.” Surely no one imagined that it would still be passed on 30 years later. We have arrived at today because the passion of those who gathered, each in their time, saying “I want to dance!” has been handed down. Of those who were there at its founding, only I, the choreographer, remain. This course of events tells a story of women's lives. Thirty years on, I feel deeply that women are still in a position where their own will alone makes it difficult to continue. Since none of us can live alone, we naturally become involved with and receive help from many people, and the form each person's activities take is that person's life itself. I am proud to see how the accumulated efforts of those who have continued have made them fine dancers, and I am encouraged by the feelings of dancers who cherish their time with Mado, even if they can no longer stand onstage.
Working in a company means being comrades, and sometimes sharing something that goes beyond family. In the early days, not knowing how to make a work, we devoted ourselves to confronting Pina's words: “Not how you dance, but why you dance.” There was a time when I grew impatient because, whatever we did, we could not escape being told, “Mado is Mado.” The sadness of ending up like Kenji Miyazawa's “Unbeaten by the Rain,” without ever having aimed to do so. NEITHER PRAISED NOR TAKEN TO HEART: even so, we diligently faced our works, and as we remade them again and again, something began to come into view. It sounds uncool when put into words, but a person's life and body begin to shine as that person and no one else. Through dance, I encountered the wonder of experiencing as light the obvious truth that every individual has one, and only one, irreplaceable life.
Even now, I work on creation every day with the dancers who are here now. The fascination, and the joy I feel, when a young dancer who had only an everyday body begins to move with an extraordinary body. When a dancer who has confronted Pina's “why you dance” begins to live onstage, I am filled with the joy of dancing: EVEN IF EVERYONE CALLS ME A BLOCKHEAD, THAT IS THE KIND OF PERSON I WANT TO BE! I no longer dance myself, so I experience it through other people's bodies. Being audience member number one is my position as Mademoiselle Cinema's choreographer; when I create, the invisible presence called “the audience” is at the origin of creation.
The present has been shaped by the collaboration between us, who founded Session House in 1991 with the minimum equipment necessary to function as a small theater, seeking to create a small theater for dance, a place for dance, and the women who stepped forward to establish a resident company. Reality is always harsh, yet, as though in inverse proportion, the dancing body has moved me, and these 30 years passed with me forgetting even the pain. Dance has that kind of power, and I feel that everyone who makes a stage—the lighting, sound, set, costume, and production staff—has been encouraged and has supported one another along the way.
Naoko Ito
Excerpt from Voice of Session House 2023
