Voice of Session House 2025

In 2020, we had finally reached our 30th year. Every weekend was filled with projects and bookings through the following year; people who needed dance gathered for the weekday dance classes, and the children in the ballet classes held sweet dreams as they worked toward their goals. “We’ve finally come this far,” I thought at the beginning of the year, that January of our 30th year. That everyday life was uprooted entirely. Since our founding, the continuing...

In 2025, I devised a project called “Night Session Live,” holding an event every other month, in the odd-numbered months, in which I invited several guest dancers to dance all the movements of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with me. I had previously done a project called “Night Session,” but then it took the form of a duet with a guest dancer. This time, four dancers including me...

Congratulations on Session House’s 35th anniversary! I am filled with respect and gratitude that it has continued to be loved by so many people for so long as [a place that nurtures dance and keeps sending out new forms of expression]. I also feel (presumptuous as it may sound) that it is a source of hope for the contemporary dance world. Becoming such a center of expression is also a goal for the compa...

In January 2025, a rare group, almost without parallel anywhere in the world, was born at Session House (first performance: January 2025). Its name is “Sensei-tionals.” All its members are currently working elementary-school teachers or childcare professionals. In other words, these “teachers,” for whom appearing before people is everyday life, bare everything on the extraordinary space of the stage in a dance collective that celebrates teachers and takes on challenges. “When teachers dance, chil...

From July 22 to 30, 2025, we performed in America (San Diego). Alongside our presentation of “Woman Is a Journey,” we also performed at a church and a kindergarten. Going to America took courage for me, as I had never left Asia before. Could I endure the long flight? Would anything go wrong at immigr...

For three years, from 2023 to 2025, I continued to participate as a guest representing the Session House Planning Office at the international dance festival NDA (NEW DANCE for ASIA), held in Daegu, Korea. These activities marked the restart of our “international exchange project after COVID,” and at the same time the annual “...

My first visit to Session House was while the floor was being installed. A senior colleague at the Momoko Tani Ballet Company, to which I belonged, introduced me, and I went to Kagurazaka to meet Mr. and Mrs. Ito. They spoke passionately about wanting to develop all sorts of dance performances and classes in this basement studio, and I felt excited as I listened. When it opened, I...

The “Chatty Art Exhibition: Message Art Exhibition vol.18,” held for the first time at Session House 2F Garden, successfully completed its run from November 10 to 16, 2025. I am now revisiting the light and shade of the works by 60 people displayed in the Session House 2F Garden space, rereading the concepts submitted by the artists and looking back at the exhib...

When I was agonizing over what to name the small theater we were starting in 1991, what finally emerged was the word “session.” In the 1960s, when I was a university student, funky jazz by Art Blakey and others was enormously popular, and I too often spent hours in jazz cafés in Shinjuku and elsewhere. Later, through my work at the broadcaster TBS...

I once heard a theory that orchestral players initially choose their instrument according to their innate temperament, then develop a personality suited to it as they master it. So how has someone who has worked in lighting at Session House for about 30 years changed? Let me list whatever comes to mind. ○ When I see a sunset or the moon, to recreate it...

Time passes so quickly that I find myself thinking, “Has it really been that long!?” The other day, when I repainted the walls of the second-floor gallery, I worked while letting my thoughts wander over many things. I remember that when the late Katsumi Kawasaki (川崎克己), my mentor and one of Session House’s founding members, first brought me here, the building was still very new. Then...

I love the moment when sound becomes audible: when music starts playing in a shop, when a theme song fills the space of a cinema, when music from a distant car draws closer. Since childhood I have been strongly drawn to that sensation of sound being born and reaching me as it makes the air vibrate. I felt as if sound slipped straight into my chest, and that...

Hello, I’m Hara. At Session House people call me “Hara-chan,” and before I knew it I had reached my fifth year on staff. I usually handle stage lighting, online streaming, reception and other duties. My connection with Session House began when I performed in UDC in 2020. But actually, even before then, behind the sta...

I remember nervously waiting for participants in Session House’s dance classes in April, 35 years ago. I can still picture the instructors, Toshinori Takagi (高木俊徳) and Yasuyo Omoto, standing dignified and tall, their backs straight. My elder sister, Naoko Ito, was starting to run a studio. At the time I was a full-time homemaker raising a child, so I offered to do office...

On February 7 this year, after the turn of the year, “Dance Flower,” a project supporting young dancers, presented seven competing works. They included a Korean dancer selected by Shunsuke Nabeshima, representing Session House at the festival in Daegu as part of the Japan–Korea dance exchange. After the performance, the three directors of the General Incorporated Association Session House Planning Office (Yasuyo Omoto, Taiju Matsumoto and Mitsutake Kasai)...

In 2025, Session House 2F Garden again served as a place for independently organized and jointly organized or supported projects, as well as rented exhibitions, talks, readings, rakugo storytelling gatherings, life-drawing sessions and other activities. A record of independently organized and jointly organized or supported projects: March 26–April 6, Tsuze Meier (ツーゼ・マイヤー) exhibition, “Echoes Of Tomorrow”; April 10–14, 9th Wa Wa Wa Hai...

January 11 and 12: Dance Bridge—A Journey in Search of Quality, “The Another Side of RK” (3 performances). Choreography and direction: Ryohei Kondo. Performers: Kaho Kogure, Shige Kigawa (木皮成), Dan Ishii (石井團), Osamu Nakamura (中村理), Niina (ニイナ), Ryohei Kondo. January 18: Theater 21 Fes vol.134 (1 performance). January 24: night session live vol.1 (1 performance). Performers: Mitsutake Kasai,...