Workshops & Intensives

Alongside the weekly classes, Session House runs dance workshops over limited periods. Some are built toward a performance, some are there to move the body harder than a regular class does, some exist to push you into a genre you have never tried. Contemporary dance, ballet, hip-hop, Nihon Buyo, yoga and a good deal else.

 

Come with an open mind, ready to step beyond your usual ways of moving.

• Julie Anne Stanzak - January 2027 intensive
• Mariko Kakizaki - Gaga people
• Sae Onishi / Remi Murai - Three Days to a Showing
• Yuko Hashimoto - Somatic Dance 2026-2027
• Jun Morii - Contemporary Dance Open Class
• Yasuyo Omoto - Ballet, back to basics
• Tomoko Hirata - Dance Technique Foundations
• Taiju Matsumoto - Quantity 1/2 with Breathing

 

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Julie Anne Stanzak - "Opening the Body, the Voice and the Word"

Five days with a dancer of Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch, ending in a showing

 

Dates

2027
Thu 7 Jan 19:30-22:00
Fri 8 Jan 10:00-13:00 / 14:00-19:00
Sat 9 Jan 10:00-13:00 / 14:00-19:00
Sun 10 Jan 10:00-13:00 / 14:00-19:00
Mon 11 Jan (national holiday) - showing, 19:00

 

Seven sessions over five days, followed by a showing.
Venue: B1F Studio

 

Fee (tax included)

¥50,000 for all seven sessions and the showing, including two tickets to the showing. Paid in advance, by bank transfer or card.

 

Places

Twenty. For people with some experience of physical expression in dance, theater or related work.

 

A message to dancers in Japan

"I would like to look for the poetry inside the body, together with you. Why do we move? We look inward at ourselves and draw out the landscape, the creative force and the energy that is there.

 

Alone and together, we experience the research that arises out of each body. Making the body stronger leads to expressing yourself more powerfully and more clearly."

 

The workshop

Through solo, duo and group practice, the workshop explores the relationship between the body and voice, word and space.

 

In the solo work, movement and text are the starting points: themes, questions and other impacts are used to build each person's own expression. In the duo work you face coexistence and interdependence, conflict and harmony, contradiction and agreement, distance and intimacy.

 

How does gesture transform a word? How do the position of the body, the direction of the gaze and the relationship to space change what a word means? Through a deep awareness of your own body and of other people's, clearer and more living expression is drawn out of voice and word. The aim is not simply to show emotion, but to listen to emotion that has not yet taken shape, and to find the form in which it becomes visible.

 

The showing

On the last evening the participants share what the workshop has explored - the possibilities of movement, word and voice. It is not aimed at presenting a finished work, but at sharing with an audience the discoveries and questions about oneself and others that arose along the way: the moment when emotion takes shape and the body begins to speak.

 

Julie Anne Stanzak

Julie Anne Stanzak is an internationally active dancer, performer, choreographer and teacher. Since 1986 she has been a member of Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch, appearing in more than thirty of Pina Bausch's works and performing all over the world. Drawing on the experience she has built in classical ballet, contemporary dance and Tanztheater, she explores presence on stage, the quality of movement, memory, and sincere expression through the body. She gives workshops and artist residencies in Europe, the United States and Japan, respecting each participant's physical sense, creativity and individuality, and making a space in which each of them can express themselves freely.

 

How to apply

Applications are taken by Kagurazaka Session House by email. They open at noon on Monday 9 November 2026 (Japan time) and close as soon as the twenty places are filled.

 

Write to mail@session-house.net with the subject line 1月ワークショップ申込 ("January workshop application"), and include your name, address, telephone number, date of birth, and a short dance history of up to 100 characters.

 

We then email you the bank details. Payment is due within seven days of that email, and your place is confirmed once the payment arrives; transfer fees are paid by the participant. Enquiries in English are welcome - write to the same address.

 

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Mariko Kakizaki - "Gaga people"

The movement language of Batsheva Dance Company, taught by one of the few certified Gaga teachers in Japan

 

Gaga is a class built on a deep awareness of physical sensation and on looking inward. Filled with rich imagery, it raises the imagination; the class is put together so as to wake several senses at once, and it trains flexibility, stamina, agility, coordination and efficiency of movement. Through playful research - soft against hard, delicacy against explosive force, restrained movement against exaggerated movement - you build your command of shape and speed. Waking the body we already have and carrying that into movement widens what the body can do. Come and move in the studio with us, and feel the joy of dancing.

 

"Gaga people" is the open form of Gaga, the movement language developed by Ohad Naharin at Batsheva Dance Company. It is open to anyone; no dance experience is needed.

 

Mariko Kakizaki (柿崎麻莉子)
From Kagawa, where she spent her childhood as a rhythmic gymnast. She entered the University of Tsukuba intending to become a teacher, but was drawn to dance by the way artists caught and expressed the world each through their own eyes. She danced with Batsheva Ensemble Dance Company (2012-2014) and with L-E-V, the company of Sharon Eyal and Gai Behar (2015-2021), and won the Japan Dance Forum Award in both 2020 and 2021. She returned to Japan in 2021. Alongside choreography for dance, theater and advertising, she runs the culture centre beq, the workshop community GAMAMA, and a children's park project, working to make spaces where people think through the body and grow their trust in it. She is a certified Gaga teacher.

 

Mariko Kakizaki opened our Session Online Theater in May 2020, and her "Dance of Empathy" can be watched on our YouTube channel.

 

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Three Days to a Showing

Sae Onishi and Remi Murai, covering Tatsukuni Ikegami's Thursday class

Over the three class days on 1, 8 and 22 October you pick up dance technique and settle the movement into the body. Everything gathered across those three days is then drawn together for a short showing on the final day, 29 October - a slightly forced march of a plan, as the teachers put it themselves.

Would you like to try the way we build a body and build a piece? No dance experience is required. Dancers very welcome; anyone who simply wants to move very welcome. Come and find out what kind of world can be made in three days.

Sae Onishi (大西彩瑛) and Remi Murai (村井玲美) are covering the Thursday contact class normally taught by Tatsukuni Ikegami of ORGAN WORKS.

Participation notes

The original programme is a three-class course on 1, 8 and 22 October followed by the showing on 29 October. All classes are required for showing participants; registration for that course has now closed. New bookings are limited to the single classes listed below. Book by the day before your class.

15 October is taught by Tatsukuni Ikegami himself, not a substitute.

Sae Onishi

From Kanagawa. She studied classical ballet from childhood and contemporary dance at Nihon University College of Art. After graduating she danced with ORGANWORKS until 2024. She now works freelance on stages in Japan and abroad, appears in music videos and commercials, choreographs and teaches, and creates work with BALA, a group formed with dancers of her generation. She has performed in works by ORGANWORKS, Company Derashinera, Ryohei Kondo and Strange Kinoko Dance Company.

Remi Murai

From Tokyo. She studied classical ballet with Junko Fukuda from childhood and graduated from the dance programme at Japan Women's College of Physical Education. She was a member of ORGANWORKS from 2016 to March 2026 and has also performed in works by Sae Onishi, Hashimoto Romance, Shintaro Oue and Nobuko Takahara.

How to book

Book through the Session House class reservation form or by email to mail@session-house.net.

Registration status
Only the single classes on 8 and 22 October are accepting new reservations.
Registration for the course leading to the showing has closed.

 

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Kagurazaka Dance School

A few days, ten or more teachers, one body

 

"There are more dreams in dance than anyone can count," says Ryohei Kondo, who serves as the school's principal. The idea is simple: over a few days you take class after class from different choreographers, each teaching their own technique, their own way into movement. You meet your own body from ten directions at once.

 

Each edition takes a theme. The May 2026 school was built around dance and music - techniques led by music, dance born alongside it, attempts at dance that generates its own music, and sessions that crossed the line between workshop and performance. Past editions have gathered teachers including Motoko Hirayama, Yukio Suzuki, Masako Yasumoto, Kim Ito and Ryohei Kondo himself.

 

Individual classes are usually priced around ¥3,300 each, with multi-class passes available. The programme, teachers and timetable change every time.

 

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Dance Senka

Learn a choreographer's work, then perform it

 

Dance Senka begins from an invitation: dance the work of a choreographer you love. The movement you meet in class becomes a piece, and the piece becomes an experience of standing on a stage - which then feeds back into your daily practice. It is the moment when the rehearsal room turns into a theater.

 

Each course is led by one choreographer working on one piece. Recent editions have been taught by Asami Ida, Naoka Uemura, Yasuyo Omoto, Taiju Matsumoto, Yuko Hashimoto and Sengiku Bando, covering contemporary dance, ballet and Nihon Buyo.

 

What it costs

 

Classes are paid for as you take them; the performance fee is paid ahead of the run. Applications close when the first class of your chosen course begins.

 

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Workshop classes through the year

Some workshops run as a standing series rather than an intensive, and can be joined a single session at a time.

 

Ballet, back to basics - Yasuyo Omoto
Usually the first Tuesday of the month, 14:35-16:00, doors from 14:00. In 2026, May and November use the second Tuesday instead. A special class with Yasuyo Omoto, who danced as prima of the Tani Momoko Ballet and still performs as its senior principal. For anyone with a year or more of basic training, for anyone returning after a break, for anyone who wants to look carefully at their foundations again, and for dancers coming from other genres. Continuing through 2026.

Upcoming dates in 2026: Tuesday 6 October, Tuesday 10 November and Tuesday 1 December, 14:35-16:00.

 

Quantity 1/2 with Breathing - Taiju Matsumoto
Friday mornings, 10:30-11:30. Half the amount of choreography of the Monday and Wednesday classes: floor work with gravity, sequences for awareness through movement, then combinations that move from dancing with the brain to dancing with the whole body and a deep breath.

 

Both are priced with the regular class system: ¥2,500 for a single class, ¥9,600 for a four-class pass valid one month, ¥23,000 for a ten-class pass valid three months, tax included.

 

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Joining a workshop

Book through the class reservation form, or simply write or call. Advance reservation is required for all workshops.

 

Email: mail@session-house.net
Tel: +81-(0)3-3266-0461 (11:00-19:00)

 

Dates, teachers and themes change with each edition, and the current programme is published in Japanese on the workshop page. If you are visiting Tokyo and want to know what is running while you are here, ask us in English and we will tell you what is on and help you book.