Fashion as theatre and Japan’s oldest department store [read more]

The whitewashed dancers of the latest Ishinha production are individual parts of a whole who are systematically arranged and rearranged like cogs in the most strange and magnificent machine imaginable [read more]

It is a festival factory line here in Tokyo. Design Festa, the Tokyo International Film Festival and Japan Fashion Week are all happening this month (with reports on all of them coming from yours truly), and a unique performing arts programme called Festival/Tokyo is about to kick off, starting with Rojishiki by Ishinha. Since forming in the early ‘70s the theatre/dance company has become renowned for their site-specific outdoor roaming performances – often set in the Muroji Temple in Nara or the isolated islands of Okayama – and this one is taking place in an old junior high school [read more]