Yoko Higashino

A geeky world born of unique collaborations The dance performance of Yoko Higashino

Dec. 08, 2008

Yoko Higashino

Born in Nara Prefecture in 1972. Began dance at the age of ten and is presently the choreographer of the dance company BABY-Q and otherwise active as a choreographer and dancer. She also performs as an improvisation artist under the name Kemumaki Yoko, doing sessions at clubs, live performance venues, galleries and outdoor venues. In 2000 she formed Dance Company BABY-Q. In 2004 she won the Choreographer of the Next Generation “NEXTAGE” award, which is the grand prize of the Toyota Choreography Awards for the 2004 work ALARM! In 2005 she won the Yokohama Prize for Brilliant Future in the group dance category in the Solo_Duo . Among her representative works are ALARM! , GEEEEEK , and error code . She has been invited to festivals in the United States, France, Italy, Singapore and S. Korea in addition to her activities in Japan. Since 2005 she is based in Koenji, Tokyo and runs the studio BABY-Q Lab.

BABY-Q
http://www.baby-q.org/

Yoko Higashino is a dancer and choreographer who started out in modern dance and in 2000 established her own dance performance group BABY-Q. With a slate of highly focused and unique members including dancers, actors, musicians, video artists and robot creators and working in collaboration a variety of guest artists, Higashino and her group produce geeky works with a high awareness of today’s subculture. In this long interview we learn about these activities plus her connection to youth culture through gigs with club musicians.
Interviewer: Kuro Pipe Stardust

Could we begin by asking about your first encounter with dance?: I was born in a little country town of Sakurai in Nara prefecture and grew up as a shy and withdrawn girls with no redeeming qualities. It’s the same town the [butoh artist] Akaji Maro comes from. The only redeeming feature I appeared to have was that my body was very flexible, and when my mother saw me dancing in front of the television as a child, she decided that it might be good if I studied dance. So, along with the usual after-school lessons like calligraphy and abacus, I began learning modern ballet from the age of 10. I was a quiet, obedient child, so I kept going to my lessons. But I also enjoyed the dancing I did there. Eventually I began going to lessons at the Art Dance Institute of Teinosuke and Kyoko Makita in Osaka.
How long did you dance at Teinosuke and Kyoko Makita?: As dance lessons, I felt I was studying there until I was a high school student. Then, when I got to the stage that I was entering dance contests, my teachers, Mr. and Mrs. Makita said, “Why don’t you try choreographing your own pieces?” From that point I feel that dance became a form of personal expression for me. And it was at that time that I first began to think about what I wanted to do with dance. Until then I had just been dancing my teachers’ choreography. It was my teachers’ world of dance and I had felt that it was somehow different from what I wanted to do.
So, taking an analogy from music, you felt that you wanted to do your own original songs instead of covers of other people’s music?: That’s right. I had gotten to the point where I wanted to do my own original pieces. And the music I wanted to dance to was things like the music of [the 1980s German experimental music band] Einstürzende Neubauten. And I even went as far as ripping my jeans and shouting! (Laughs) That was around my senior year in high school. At recitals I used noise/industrial music in pieces that were virtually the opposite extreme from the dance world of my teachers. And I guess it is good that my teacher let me do that at the time. They didn’t tell me I couldn’t do such pieces or that I had dance more beautifully. They said, “That was good, Yoko-chan!” (Laughs) I think it was their letting me do what I wanted at that time that was the start of the path that has led to what I am today. And, the fact that the things I did were chosen for prizes at the contests made me feel that my work was being accepted. Originally, be it in film, music to art, I liked the decadent and fin-de-siecle type works, and I was able to give form to that kind of mood in dance. And that remains the point of departure to this day in what I am doing. There was also the fascination of working hard myself to create something. And the fact that I was creating them in my room, which was so small that my hands often hit the wall as I went through the movements.
Considering that you were born in 1972, the music of Neubauten wasn’t that new when you were working with it.: Yes. At the time, the newest music was Madonna and Michael Jackson, and my teachers were using music like that, and I danced to it too (laughs). But, I always had my doubts about it.
How did a high school girl like you living in a country town in Nara come to know the music of Neubauten?: I went to Tenri High School in Nara, which is a school that gathers students from all over the country, and half of them live in dormitories while they are there. I lived at home and commuted to school, and I wasn’t a follower of the Tenri Sect, but there were classmates there who were into music and playing in bands. It was their influence. We went together to concerts and the new live music clubs that were springing up at the time.
After you graduated from high school, did you go Osaka right away?: I stayed in Nara for a while. The teachers I had been studying under in Nara also taught in Osaka and while attending a junior college I was busy every night helping out with their children’s dance classes and teaching for them sometimes and also had them advising me in my own dance work. After graduating from junior college, I continued helping out there, but at the same time I was feeling that I wanted to concentrate more on my own dancing and perhaps learn from another teacher.
I guess when you see the framework you are confined to, it makes you want to break out of it and express yourself in your own way. Anyway, I got to the point where I wanted to try working independently for once. I got together with two DJs and formed a unit named Error System and we began performing in Osaka. At that time I danced solo and also performed live with a didgeridoo player, and it was at one performance at a temple that I met a young woman named Natiho Toyota, who now does the music for our group Baby-Q. That meeting formed the foundation for our present Baby-Q dance company.
At the time of Error System, what kinds of events were you performing in?: I very much disliked the contemporary dance scene in Osaka at the time; what you might call the dance establishment. If you joined that establishment, it was probably easy to get chances to perform and get connections to a lot of people, but none of those people were interested in what we were doing anyway. So, we were performing at clubs and at outdoor venues that usually had nothing more than a stage and a sound system.
By the end of the 90s things like outdoor “rave” concerts were beginning to become established, weren’t they?: Yes. We did performances at those kinds of events and we also planned events ourselves at places like temples. There was also a small theater called Karavinka above the Osaka Zokei Center where we could put on our own self-funded performances. I also performed sometimes as an actress and dancer for the outdoor theater company Pretty Hate Machine, which was an offshoot of the [Osaka avant-garde theater company] Ishinha .
In those days there were no places or conditions suitable for performance, and no supporting infrastructure or systems. Also, there was no audience specifically oriented toward dance. What I wanted was not an audience that was used to watching dance but people who could approach and feel dance on our same expressive level. That feeling is still the same today. We were looking for an audience, looking for people who found our form of expression interesting. As I was working on ideas I was always thinking about how to make it possible to suddenly start a performance in front of people who had gathered to dance and have them react initially by saying, “What is this?” And then after it was over they would say, “That was good.”
On the Osaka dance music scene at the time, it was a rarity for what you would normally call [professional] dancers to be performing, wasn’t it?: In a scene dominated by dance that evolved from reggae, techno or house music, I believe that we were a rarity in that we were doing something like contemporary dance that was difficult for people to understand. With Error System I performed like that for three or four years.
Where did the name Error System come from?: The three of us decided to create a system that was wrong, a faulted system. Part of the reason was that I believed that the organizational structure and systems [of the dance world] were faulted. There were times when Error System applied to perform in the festivals organized by that dance establishment. That was because at the time there were really no other places to perform. We have some members in Baby-Q now who saw Error System perform back then and searched for years to find us. At the time there was no information about the performers in the event fliers and such, so people who wanted to join us couldn’t even find us.
Was there a period of overlap between Error System and Baby-Q activities?: I had reached a point where I had begun to feel the limitations of solo performance in dance. It puts limits on one’s vocabulary and what one is able to express. It was around the time that I had begun to get the desire to have a number of interesting people performing with me, using characters and images to create and direct a unique world of performance that I started Baby-Q with Natiho Toyota and Miki Ikehata. Our first performance as Baby-Q was at the Shimanouchi church in 2000. The reason that we did it at a Christian church is probably the influence of Pretty Hate Machine and Ishinha. In either case I think it was our desire to create our own world of performance and do it in a do-it-yourself manner (laughs). I was probably influenced by the kind of hungry spirit that enabled them to live in outdoor shacks for a month and do all the work themselves for a production, including building the set. I wanted to try that kind of effort myself.
That first production was E-DEN – electronic garden and the performers in it included people like an actress from Ishinha, musicians, a stripper and actors. There were no dancers in the sense of people who had been trained in dance. Although you couldn’t really call it theater, in the early BABY-Q productions there were characters and a storyline. We were working and performing with an extremely high-strung spirit. In that Christian church we had a stripper dressed as a nun masturbate with an upside-down cross and doing a strip dance, and in the end the dancers tear apart the “Destroyed Robot” sound machine. All this was happening on a stage in the church. It was the kind of event where I’m sure that the priest was praying that it would be over quickly and we would all go home (laughs).
Where did the BABY-Q name come from?: It is an abbreviation for “Babylon Quest.” Babylonia was said to be a kingdom of vice and virtue and the people of its capital, Babylonia, were possessed of both beauty and the uglier sides of human nature. The image behind this name is one of bringing both of these aspects to the stage with the spirit and sensitivity in a quest to delve into the human spirit and human nature itself to find things that truly touch the human soul. At a glance this might look like the name of a cute children’s clothing line (laughs). When we first chose this name we thought it was a good one, but after coming to Tokyo we were often told that we should change it (laughs). People said it would never be understood and accepted overseas (laughs).
From what you say, many of the people involved in creating your BABY-Q works are not dancers.: I don’t really want to use dancers. There are times when a person who is too skilled as a dancer lacks individuality and thus is not interesting, don’t you think? They are skillful and they do what you tell them to do faithfully, but their performance isn’t really interesting. You might say it is superficial, or insubstantial. My personal sense is that, rather than dance itself, I want to bring the appeal of people themselves, with all their fascinating individuality, directly to the stage as part of the central image of a work. People who watch BABY-Q only from a dance standpoint often say that I’m the only one in the group that can dance, but that is not the kind of appeal that I’m interested in. That was especially said early on. Lately the dance aspect has increased and our style has changed, but I still feel absolutely that if a person’s character is interesting, their dance will be interesting. And I think it is most interesting if we have them stand out for their character, not their dance.
Does that way of thinking come from your opposition to the dance establishment?: No. It is simply a reflection of what I want to do. And that’s why we had to build our own support system. Of course there was opposition to the establishment on my part and I wasn’t interested in taking the easy route of performing within the confines of the existing dance scene, so we had a desire to seek out our own places to perform. After the first Baby-Q production at the church, we did things like taking a request straight to the large public venue called AI HALL in Itami city without introduction, asking them to let us rent out the hall for performances. We also performed at a small box-like space at Tenoh-ji city called Rokusodonta and at a music and dance event called Mukogawa Dance on the Banks held on a nice grassy area on the banks of a river.
Now BABY-Q has moved its base of activities to the Koenji area of Tokyo , but I would like to ask you to tell us some more about your activities when you were based in Osaka. At that time, what types of people were involved in BABY-Q?: When the three of us had just started out as BABY-Q, we collaborated with Destroyed Robot on some works. I got to know him [Kanami Nozu] through Pretty Hate Machine and I asked him if he didn’t want to try working on a piece that was a bit closer to dance. As for the dancers, they were mainly actresses and actors that I invited to collaborate with us. For the music, I invited people like Takahiro Yamamoto from BusRatch and Shiro the Goodman, and for video I invited people like the VJ team BetaLand. You could say that it was a group of people who regulars of the Osaka [live performance] club scene. In other words, we gathered a bunch of interesting people we met in those places. When I asked them if they wanted to try working with us, they were interested and the ended up working very hard for us on the productions. That’s partly because it was at a period where there was not a lot of dance expression involved to confuse things.
Did each of the participating artists contribute ideas to the final works?: Yes. They would say things like, “Can I do it with white body makeup?” When someone said that she could do pole dancing, we would end up creating a scene for that. Another might say, “Since I’m an actress, I think I’d like to do this part in such-and-such a way.” In that way, scenes were shaped by the characters of the participants. That is still an aspect of my creative process today. Instead of my choreographing the part for each dancer, I am more often being asked by them like “Let me do this and come out.”
Osaka is actually a rather small town, so it is easy for artists to connect to each other. Because the divisions between the different genre of music, theater and dance are not as distinct as they are in a place like Tokyo, there is more cross-over and the genre are closer to each other. The performances clubs serve as a place for artists to socialize, and all the people who are doing interesting things come to hang out there.
As we were carrying on that way, we reached a point where we wanted a studio space of our own and, as if with perfect timing, a friend found us an abandoned building named Misono Bldg. The friend was intending to start a club on the first floor and there was a room on the second floor that had surely been a bar before the tenants ran off, because it had a counter with a mirror wall behind it. We ended up renting that simply because it had the mirror wall. Since it had the mirrors, all we had to do to make it into a studio was to take out the ceiling and cover the floor with linoleum. Another do-it-yourselfer (laughs).
So, with that you had your own place for the first time.: Yes. What’s more, Misono became quite an active building, as a record shop moved in and friends started a bar and a massage salon. One friend invited me to join in starting a café, so after that we were having our lessons in the daytime and then worked at “Café-Q” at night. That was around 2003, and we had a lot of artists doing live stages there for us.
It sounds like you created a place where the people you met at the clubs could gather.: And we did a lot of collaborative sessions too. We did sessions with improvisational music. There was a live performance space called Shinsekai Bridge and a number of the artists and DJs who performed there would come over to our place and they’d say, “Next time we’d like to do a collaboration with you.” All the time there was the opportunity to hear music we had never heard before. It was a fascinating period to be in Osaka.
In that way I was living two lives at the same time, but eventually my dance activities took up more and more of my time, and as it did I found myself wanting to concentrate more on dance. By that time Misono had been built up as place where people could gather and enjoy themselves, to the degree that I felt it would be OK if I moved on. And just as I was beginning to think about going to Tokyo for a while, I was asked if I wanted to submit a work for the Toyota Choreography Awards. Being the first award submission since I was entering contests as a child, I decided to give it a go. Before I knew it we had passed the video judging stage, which meant that we had to go to Tokyo for the live performance stage of the judging. That sent us all in a whirl. But we gave it our best shot and we won an award, and that became the impetus that let us to move our base of activities to Tokyo.
What made you decide to leave Osaka for Tokyo?: Part of it was the fact that I had come to think of Osaka as a city with limits that were confining to some degree. I felt that I had done a lot of it, performed in most of the theaters there and met a lot of the people there were to meet. I had also done about as much as I could with the musicians that I had wanted to do collaborative sessions with. I believe there would continue to be things I could be doing if I still lived in Osaka, but my personal impulse to dance is very strong. Dance is something that you have to see live in order for feel what it has to communicate, and although Tokyo may only be one stop along my way, I believe I was looking for a new world to explore.
Certainly it was gratifying hearing people in Osaka say, “Baby-Q? Yeah, they’re good.” But I also wanted to hear constructive criticism, and I had a desire to see worlds I hadn’t seen before. I may be addicted to stimulation (laughs). And I’m not one to be overly cautious, but rather one who tends to leap before I look (laughs). So, before I could say in words what I was going to do in Tokyo, and despite the fact that I had no studio here to work in, I had already decided on the house I would live in. My body moved before I can put in words what I am doing. And I will admit that when I came to Tokyo it took me a while to get my bearings. That was in the spring of 2005.
Why did you choose the Koenji area of Tokyo?: For one thing I had a lot of friends here, and the Chuo Line felt like a good starting point from the transportation standpoint (laughs). At first I though Tokyo was a town where you had to straight up, but Koenji is a lot like Osaka being laid back in that you don’t have to be formal, and all in all it’s a comfortable place to live. At first I was thinking of renting a ballet studio in its off hours, but that proved to be too expensive, so we decided to make our own studio. A studio is easy to make because it is only a matter of laying down the linoleum flooring and putting up the mirrors. I called in some friends from my Ishinha days and it was another do-it-yourself job (laughs).
I feel that same spirit of making your own place with your own hands somewhere in the works of Baby-Q as well. So, where is it in the Baby-Q works created by input from all the participants that we can see your own personal world, your own ideas as an artist? I would like to ask you now about your own personal artistic world and how you go about creating your works. In your solo works with BABY-Q there are inorganic things like dolls or machines that are on the stage with you as if they are actors with specific roles to play. In this I sense an underlying aesthetic that runs through most of your work. What is the [artistic] aim in this?: I just can’t resist putting them on stage. Iron, things that are hard, things that aren’t living, and are a bit broken-down and decrepit as well, and they are often things that take on an aspect of personification. At first I chose things unconsciously, but then I started thinking about why I was choosing non-human thing for my art and I realized that among my influences were artists like Shuji Terayama and the man-machine (l’homme-machine) theory of Surrealism that says the human can be a machine and a machine can be human.
I am a human but there are mechanical images and movements in my dance. When you think of it, the body for which we choreograph can be thought of as a kind of machine. An extremely well made machine that can give you the very finest nuances of angle and movement. I want to have these things on stage perhaps as machines with souls we can communicate with. And I guess I am drawn to the idea of interacting with them through dance. From them you can see the time it has taken the iron to rust and feel how it deteriorates. In some sense it grotesque as visual elements, it is not something of refined beauty, but I want to show an aesthetic in it. It is something I am searching for myself and I instinctively make it a part of my dance. The work that made me realize this might be the worldview I wanted to pursue was ←Z←/Z Comical Bachelor Machine . Marcel Duchamp created works he called “bachelor machines” and I was very much influenced by that vision of machines. I even feel affectionate to them.
Today in the 21st century, Surrealism is a “classic” part of art history. Have you thought much about why you are attracted to a Surrealist methodology?: I have no interest in delving into the question of why it is something old enough to be called classic. I am living in the present, so I am not caught up in the past, but I also know that it is a sensibility that definitely exists in me. This combination of machine-like things and raw sexuality. It may be because I am a woman, it may be the blood flowing in my veins, and it may be an instinctual contrasting of my sensibilities as a woman and the mechanical. The prominence of raw, visceral things may be due to maternal instinct; I think it is related to the process of giving birth to a child.
Are you talking about a world that is seen by contrasting machines, which can be used for production, and female sexuality? I felt a strong sense of female sexuality in your new solo piece VACUUM ZONE . I felt that I was getting a glimpse of your resigning yourself to the challenge of what the woman Yoko Higashino can do when placed alone in a vacuum-like space.: The female sexuality that appears in my works is not really something that is used a weapon in the sense of Eros, but as something that might be called an essential, or something that I believe doesn’t need to be hidden. And by showing it instead of hiding it, I hope it can get people to think about the extremes of Japanese society or how female sexuality is seen only as an object of desire. The result is that I will often have my female performers dance in near-nude costumes or even completely nude. You can’t live without desire. The fact that I am a woman is not something that I am consciously bringing out, as it is normally an unconscious state, but it does come out naturally, of its own, when I am creating works. It is not a calculated thing.
From the works of BABY-Q I get the impression that you listen to the opinions of the participating members, who are all people of very strong individuality, and you are resolute in your role of arranger as you create. Can you tell us something about your creative method and process?: I was deeply moved, even shocked when I saw Pina Bausch’s work Victor in 1999. It is “people.” You get the feeling “I like that person” and you remember the dancer’s face. It is not often that you remember a person’s face after only seeing them once, so I was fascinated by that sense of coming to like each of the different characters. I took a long-distant night bus and came alone all the way to Tokyo to see Victor and I was so moved that I cried and cried. I believe it was because of the way it went to the heart of the strength that people themselves have in them. It is fascinating when you realize that even though the things the dancers are doing are simple, there it intent in each movement that gives it meaning and significance. I think there was also the influence of Shuji Terayama’s Throw Away Your Books, Rally in the Streets , but I think it was seeing Pina Bausch’s work that led to the desire to start the group BABY-Q.
The subject of each of my works is large in scale; I guess I am the type that wants to present a big worldview (laughs). So when decide to do a piece I begin by thinking of a title. In order to communicate the thing I want to say most, I search very hard for key words of the kind that can later give flavor to the work.
For example, with the BABY-Q piece GEEEEEK , which was the first work I did after coming to Tokyo, I took the word geek with its meanings of something abnormal or a nerdy otaku, and I added three extra e’s to give the feeling of calling out geeeek!, as if trying to escape somehow from that state. With the title GEEEEEK! I wanted to create an association with our environment, sensitivities, the things we have experienced and the flood of information from media.
With the title of the work before that, ALARM! , which means a warning, I wanted the image of “There’s danger. The alarm is sounding. What do we do? What are you going to do?” With the work VACUUM ZONE the image is that the world is mostly garbage and debris, and when it is all vacuumed away maybe something important will be left behind, and the desire to search for the important things that remain. Once these images are decided, I get us to start working on the sound, video, [stage] art and flyer visuals, etc., all at the same time. So it is never a case that the choreography is done first. The choreography comes last.
When I start to think about what people I want to create the world of this new work with I think about who I want to work with, who shares the worldview and sensibilities it involves. Then I go and consult with them; if it is video it may be ROKAPENIS. I say, “This is the title. Do you have any images to suggest?” “I want to make a scene where I dance in such and such a way. Do you have any ideas?” What I often do is to define a specific type of world in this way, see what comes back as input from the participants and then modify it in an interactive process. There are few cases where I will have a firmly set idea and tell the people that I want them to do it exactly as it is. Instead, it is a process of working together with people that I believe in and trust.
It is the same with the dancers. Although there are parts that are choreographed, but in most cases the scenes come out from the dancers themselves. We are always doing improvisational workshops where we are training dancers, and in these workshops we get the dancers to look into themselves and have them experience what kind of dance comes out of the process. Watching this process closely I see the natures, the qualities of the individual dancers, and what I find is that the skillful ones always do the same movements and because of that their dance isn’t interesting. It is the ones who aren’t skillful but are trying their hardest to bring something out who are really interesting.
In this way, I don’t play the dominant artist in the creative process. And even though I make the final decisions, the feeling is one of a collaborative process. With regard to the sound, I first describe in words the kind of scene I want to create and when the firsts results come back from the sound creator I may add further requests to modify it is some aspects. In the same way with the video visuals, the requests go back and forth until one work is created and then the dance takes shape with that as the base. It is always my part that is put off till last (laughs). And I am always making last minute changes and adjustments right up to the time of the general rehearsal.
Perhaps I’m the kind of person who wants to make sure the perimeter is secured; the type who wants to say this and that, not satisfied just to dance. In the job of directing, the small detail adjustments are very important, in the lighting, in the volume of the sound. Once the perimeter, the peripheral elements are secured the work can stand on its own and I am not constrained in terms of the choreography and can dance freely.
Speaking specifically about VACUUM ZONE , you have the kinds of stage art that is consistent with the BABY-Q aesthetic set up on the stage and then it all gets sucked away into a whole until just the single person, Yoko Higashino, is left on stage. I was tremendously impressed by that directorial methodology.: I’m very happy to hear that you think so. There is the feeling of fear at being left alone, but there is also the important aspect of being free to be yourself, and if you can’t be yourself then there isn’t any you anywhere. Until you come to that state, you use a variety of things to decorate and show yourself as you would like to be seen. So the idea is that when all those things are all stripped away, I can dance. I exist. I am alive. Creating a solo work is truly difficult. I think and agonize over many different choreographic elements, but eventually I threw them all out and resorted to a process of repeated trial and error.
I had had the basic structure of VACUUM ZONE in my mind for a full year and I had once tried a piece using a similar situation. That was a piece I did at a subway construction site in Osaka, with everything improvisational except the dance. It was a performance that was close to pure improvisation by everyone. In a construction site hole where debris and dust were falling from overhead, we had people doing their things in this confusion. That is where the [vacuum] image originated from. I got the feeling that I wanted to explore that kind of world once again in greater depth.
I would like to ask you tell us some more about how you choose the subjects for your works. Considering the timing of the 2008 BABY-Q work MATAR O NO MATAR just after the indiscriminate multiple killing incident in Akihabara, the title seems to be related to the incident. Do specific incidents or social problems directly influence your creative process in such a way?: Since I’m alive, such things do have an effect—it becomes fiercer and fiercer (laughs). By nature I have the tendency to be deliberately demonstrative in my artistic expression. Although it would be possible to simply concentrate on dance without paying attentions to such social aspects, the fact that I choose to deal with these issues is because I feel them in my life and because it is often the shocking incidents in life that stir our emotions.
The title MATAR O NO MATAR means “do or die,” or “live or die,” and an incident like that shows that we don’t know really know when we might be in a life or death situation. I got that title from the CD title originally. As far as the Akihabara incident is concerned, an underclasswoman of one of my friend died there. She was just there doing a part-time job handing out advertisements and she got fatally stabbed. That’s how close death can be. You look at the newspaper and you see that kind of incident reported almost every day. You look at TV and you see people dying like that all the time, and we get used to that state. We feel the heart grow callous and I started wondering how people would react if we brought it to the stage.
The plan for MATAR O NO MATAR came from the idea of doing a work with BABY-Q that was an extension of my solo piece E/G , which was a piece in which I had different musicians for each day’s performance. It arose from an interest in seeing in what ways a piece would change when I took a work in progress and had completely different types of musicians perform in it each day. I think pieces like this can be called a work, but there was also the possibility that we would be overshadowed by the musicians. Since we are using musicians that we trust, there is not much chance of that happening, but it was still a gamble in some sense.
The young man who committed the killings in the Akihabara incident became the focus of a lot of attention as a case of an Akihabara (geek) type killing fellow Akihabara frequenters. With all the advances in information technology, you only have to turn on the TV to see these kinds of shocking incidents, even if you don’t want to, but the things you really want to know remain hard to find and the important things seem to get lost in the information networks and don’t reach us. In a social atmosphere like this, I think that dance has a tremendous amount of potential as a form of expression using only the body. Perhaps tragedies like that wouldn’t happen if the person had been able to interact more with other people. Works like E/G and MATAR O NO MATAR , being session type works, are a very easy to understand form of human encounter and interaction, and it think they present an essential form of communication.: Yes, communication fails so often, like mail that doesn’t come through. A stage is a live performance, and I am always thinking about that fact. The most important thing is to get people to come to the theater and experience the performance live. It is wrong to think it is good by just watching tapes of the performances. I think that the important thing is to be there, to experience it live, be moved by it and feel yourself there, breathing the same energized air.
I would like to go back a bit and ask you about the 3-year period when you were doing pieces at the AI HALL in Osaka.: When I went to AI HALL in 2001 to ask if I could perform there, it was for my own solo piece. After seeing me perform that piece there, the Hall’s director, Reiko Shiga, came to me and invited me to participate in the “take a chance projects” that the Hall had begun. It was a project that gave young performers the chance to use the Hall for three years with production funds provided and the freedom to do whatever type of productions they wanted. That was indeed a very big break for me. It was a time when I didn’t have a place to perform and for that reason was especially determined to work hard and give it my best shot, the gift of that Hall and production funds enabled me to produce the kind of works I wanted to do.
The first of those three years, I was understandably still searching. At the time, BABY-Q was just the three of us and when our images didn’t mesh there was sometimes conflict. The first year we did a work called REMroom , and after we finished that the other two members said they wanted to take some time off. I was thinking that perhaps we were in danger of breaking up as a unit, and when I asked Shiga-san what I should do, she said that I should try it with the attitude that I was a director the next year. Thanks to those words I was able to continue the next two years of the project. And that gave me the opportunity to think about myself as an artist and as myself such questions as why I used machines. The next work that emerged out of that process was ←Z←/Z Comical Bachelor Machine . Then the third year I did ALARM! .
Those three years were like a period of intense, religious training, and I think it was those three years that developed BABY-Q into a firmly established group. ALARM! Started out as a 15-minute piece and then developed into an hour-long work, and then it was remade into a 25-minute piece to submit for the awards, and the final state of the work is what premiered at AI HALL. This was back in 2004 and 2005. You could say that the three works REMroom, Bachelor Machine and ALARM! , can be considered a history of my development as an artist and they represent the period when my feeling of searching changed to one of some assurance in what I was doing artistically.
What kinds of changes occurred in the kind of style you were searching for?: At first I didn’t have a clear idea of what I wanted to say or how I wanted to say it. I had been dancing for a very long time so I was very confident in my ability to dance, but it was a period when I didn’t know in what way I wanted to dance. I had also reached a stage when it wasn’t enough just to dance and it was a time when I was searching very hard for a way to express myself in dance.
From the time I started BABY-Q I wanted to base works on how to present the fascinating aspects of people, but at first it didn’t go smoothly. It was as if I was trying to force my images into dance and ended up getting nowhere, as if I was running in place at full speed. I had been spending about six months on each work, but from ALARM! I adopted a “work in progress” method in which I would spend about a year and a half gradually working up a piece. The order of the scenes would change often and I would make a variety of scenes on different images but I always felt that I didn’t want the core of the work to change, and in the end it didn’t. In fact it was the opposite, I found that the worldview, the vision behind the theme that my works were based on became clearer. That is when I first assured that my vision wasn’t wrong. I realized that the first impulse to come to me of how I wanted to dance a piece was the most important, and even if I continued a long process of developing and refining that, I found that I had come to the point where I had real assurance about what scene of a work was the most important.
In one sense it is my own assumption that I am not wrong, but if you give that assumption a better name, it can be called assurance or confidence. I realized that believing in your own assumptions is important. I had reached the point where as an artist I could say, “This is what I believe,” no matter what people thought or felt. I feel that I became stronger during those three years.
Do you take video footage when you are working on a piece, and do you make a choreographic score?: I don’t have video recordings taken at all. I dislike looking at video recordings. And I keep agonizing over the composition of a piece right to the end, and I will often change the order of the scenes. With GEEEEK I even changed the scenes when we took the production to South Korea. Since it is dance, it can be purely abstract, but I always have a narrative storyline in my mind and I want all the performers to perform with an understanding and acceptance of that storyline.
It doesn’t have to be so clear that one look will tell you what is what, but it is important to me that we all have a sense of the storyline running through a work so that we all know what each scene means and how it connects to the next scene. It is meaningless if this shared consciousness isn’t there. The work is actually composed around very slight and precise intervals and transitions between scenes that are based on this shared understanding. But now, and this is one of my personal artistic issues right now, there is a kind of pattern to the way I direct BABY-Q works and I’m now in a period where I want to examine this aspect. I am not trying to create works from a different angle. Even if it is not on a large scale, I want to create some works that I do not perform in.
How do you select your music? Is it what the flow of a work is based on?: In the past I did works that derived from and couldn’t have stood without the sound, but now in most cases the sound is used to narrate the world of the work. The world of sound is something that I use with great care and importance, maybe to the point of being overly sensitive to it. I believe that the aural element is next in importance to the visual element on the stage. I value highly the world that sound creates and the development of many of the scenes in our works is effected by the sound. But rather than it being a case of dancing in accompaniment to the sound, it is a case where the sound creates a space for the scene to take place. It is never a case of dancing to the beat of the music—one, two, three, …five, six, seven, eight.
Also, it is not the dancing of the dancers that is the main part of my works. I want everything to be equal in importance. I want the dance, the art, sound, video, lighting, the stage space, the costumes, the visuals and the information to all exist on the same level. That’s why in our company we have video artists and musicians, costume designers and visual artists. It’s DIY (do it yourself). That makes the results more certain. That is the way to ensure that each of the creators fully understands what I have in mind. If you outsource the work, I can’t really reject it when the creator comes back with something completely different from what I had imagined. If we do things in-house, I can say, “That’s different from what I’m thinking of, Let’s try doing it again.” Because they are people I am always working with, we can get closer to what I am thinking of much more easily. That’s true not only in our works but in daily life also. With a small session or with communication, and that’s why I’m called “Mom” around the company. I’ll be saying, “If you haven’t eaten, why don’t you stay for dinner?” (laughs). Or, “He didn’t look good, I think I’ll stop by and see how he’s feeling.” I think that’s why they all came to Tokyo [from Osaka] when I moved here. And that is why I think the ideal situation is to have a residence on the second floor above the theater like the Asbestos Kan does. At first we were going to rent a warehouse with the idea of creating a place like that, but it was too expensive (laughs). I am just grateful that we were able to make ourselves a studio here.
You are well known for working with a large number of artists outside your group, especially musicians, in sessions that often resemble some sort of pitched battle, and it seems that in doing so you are instinctively seeking involvement in forms of expression outside the of dance. Is the desire to work with them something that comes from a discontent with the existing genre, including dance?: It stimulates me. Perhaps you could say that I discover aspects of myself that I never imagined before. It is not done because I know the music, I do it because I am interested in seeing what will happen when I put myself in a situation that exists only in one moment and will never exist again. You could call it the quest of “my great self,” or you call it study. People often say, “How can you do all those different sessions?” But for me it is no strain at all. There is a club in Koenji with a performance space that is only a couple of meters square, but I see it as a chance to see what I can do within those confines. You can see it as a form of practice within specified limitations. I don’t say, “I can’t work in those conditions.” On the contrary, I want to experience the unique tension that will be encountered in such conditions. That makes for a really intensive form of practice. I don’t do it because I want to do a dance that I already know. I do it because I want to let myself experience something inside me that could—or could not—come out in those special conditions, something I don’t know yet.
It is the kind of thing that can seldom come out practicing alone in the studio. I am one who believes firmly in the importance of the basics of technique and basic lessons. If you do your ballet lessons or your own regimen of practice with diligence and train yourself to the point where you have full control all the way to the tips of your toes, then you can reach a state where your feelings are everything. What kind of dance will come out of such a state? I believe that if you can use your body effectively you can express what you feel.
Concerning improvisation, it depends how much inspiration there is in it and how much you are moved by it. I am drawn to the experience of things that can only happen in the specific moment performing in front of people. The feeling you get performing live sessions in front of an audience is something you can’t experience in everyday life. The awesome feelings that you never get in normal daily life, the exhilaration, the feeling of devastation that makes you break out in tears. Being moved that much is something that only happens in the moments when you are performing in front of people, and that is the fascinating thing about it for me. And I want people to see that.
For these mainly music session, you use the name Kemumaki Yoko, as opposed to Higashino Yoko or BABY-Q. Do the things that you experience in the situated methodology-like atmosphere of those sessions influence your work as Higashino Yoko or BABY-Q?: When I’m performing as Kemumaki, I can be irresponsible, if you will. There is a definite professional responsibility when I am performing as Yoko Higashino. It is the same with BABY-Q. But as Kemumaki I can be bad, like a kid who flicks up the girls’ skirts and runs. I can do crazy, bad things like that without responsibility. It is kind of cute, isn’t it (laughs)? I like that state where I can just shrug off whatever happens.
With that clear disassociation, don’t the things you experience as Kemumaki Yoko influence the creative process of Higashino Yoko?: Oh yes, it does, very much. The stimulation I receive there or the things that start me thinking will eventually come out in my works. The sessions I do as Kemumaki serve as a good alternative form of practice for me as well as a place of discovery. The things I struggle with in my studio practicing are important too, but I believe that the things I do instinctively as Kemumaki are also necessary for me to progress and grow as an artist. It is a state where I can dance without fear, freely and easily.
In 2007 at UPLINK you did a session as Kemumaki with the artist Atsuhiro Ito, who uses florescent lights and the mural and live painting artist Hiraku Suzuki. This is a clear example in which a successful [improvisational] session was done by three artists who work in completely different ways and no one could imagine how that could work together. Do you have any thoughts about what makes for a successful session in those kinds of one-off events?: I do. I believe that if the performers in an improvisational session are not communicating successfully with each other, the session will certainly fail. If the performers go to excess it inevitably becomes a self-involved one-person show. It is like masturbation. As long as there is a session partner, not to mention and audience, there has to be give-and-take between the two artists and you have to make the effort to communicate it to the audience as well. It is not enough just for the two artists to be doing it between each other. You have to have concern for the audience as well and make sure what the artists are doing is reaching them. If you don’t do that I believe that you don’t have the right to charge money to have the audience see the performance.
Even when it is an improvisation session, do you meet in preparation and talk out what you are going to do as collaborative artists.: Yes, you have to make sure that you share the same vision and the same aesthetic sensitivities going into the session. You can’t work with someone completely unknown to you. You can’t do it if you have no idea what is going to come out of the other artist. I want to understand the other person’s qualities and vocabulary as an artist and then do the session once I feel some kind of resonance with them. Because if I don’t have that resonance, it is very difficult to have an interesting session. Basically you could do a session with virtually anyone, but it is also no good if you try too hard to harmonize with the other artist. At some point you have to bring in something that they don’t expect or something that surprises them, or do something off-key. In the past I tried to hard to harmonize, but once you get used to improvising, you find yourself in the midst of it. It is not enough if you just harmonize in the sense of when the other artist increases the volume or pace you respond by doing the same. You can respond by gradually building your tension, but then you have to have the presence and the individuality to throw something different at them that they don’t expect.
Are there any particular artists you want to work with or places that you want to perform in the future?: I want to do more work with people I don’t know. And not just in Japan. When I was invited to Italy I said that I wanted to do something with a local musician. Then they proposed someone and we got together and created a work that we then toured Italy with. In France I took part in what they called the “Park in Progress” program in which various artists from different countries did performances in parks. At that time I worked with a Czech musician and created a work. The next year they invited me back and I found that they had prepared a tour for us in the Czech Republic and Hungary. When I perform alone, the mood of my dance tends to depend a little more on the music, so I want to have more experiences like that of just going abroad and meet artists, do a work with them on the spot and then tour with it. That is true with the artists in France, and I’ve also been invited to go to Spain and Norway in 2009.
In the case of working with someone I don’t know, there may be times when I hear their music first and say, “No, I don’t think this will be an artist I can work with.” But, if I think it will work, we me, say hello and work for the first time, creating a piece in two days or so. I try doing it with my limited English, just words and gestures, but it is possible because my language is the body, it is dance. I would like to have more opportunities to work like that.
Now that we are on the subject of overseas projects, can you tell us more about the things you have done internationally?: The first time I went overseas was a long time ago with my teachers (the Makitas), when I was in middle school and in my first year of high school on a cultural exchange program to London and Paris. I went as our teachers’ assistant. They had me wearing a kimono-like costume at the theater and it was like, “modern dance!” (laughs). Then, in around 2003 I went with the band Drill Chop Nine, who were doing our vocals and dance, and we went to Chicago and New York to give performances.
The first time we were invited officially for performances as BABY-Q was in 2005, to New York and France. But the BABY-Q invitations have been purely as a dance company, we have mostly been invited to more music-oriented festivals. In 2007 we went to the festival in Nimes in southern France that a variety of Japanese musicians have been invited to, and this year when we went to Mexico it was again for a music festival. The only dance festivals we have been invited to are the one just recently SPAF in S. Korea, France’s Enghien-les-Bains and da:ns Festival in Singapore 2006.
On our Italian tour in 2006 we performed in front of ancient ruins and in numerous outdoor venues. In Italy we gave the title “Geek” and after dancing in various places with that title, the work came to be consolidated under the title GEEEEEK Lately I have gradually shifted to a “work in progress” method in which I work one image into a work using about a two-year cycle. It is not that I have such a lot of things to say, it is more a matter of valuing the process of examining what the true meaning of the images I get are and how best to communicate them, ever since ALARM! I believe that this is the best working method for me.
Another factor is that the stage facilities we happen to have available to us on overseas tours may be completely different. I am the type who looks a particular theater and decided how I want to do the work in that facility. For example, in one theater I might want to project video on the back wall of the stage area, and in the process of doing it in various places the same work might change a lot, because I want to get it in the best possible form given the stage facilities available. It is the same when working in Japan, and I may have to ask the staff re-do the blueprints each time. But that is the way to best communicate the things I want and it improves the effect of the work.
What is the reaction to BABY-Q performances overseas?: In every country it is amazing. It is not uncommon to have five curtain calls. In Japan it will never be more than three. Audiences overseas are more direct in their reactions. I found that true in S. Korea as well. The Japanese often can’t applaud if the people around them aren’t applauding, and they won’t laugh if the people around them aren’t laughing. You know how shy they are. They may say afterwards that our performance was good. I wish they’d show it at the time instead! (laughs)
I believe that our works are rather easy to understand. They are based on clearer images than a lot of contemporary stuff. I guess that makes it easier even for people who are not used to watching dance to get something out of it, and that is part of our purpose as well. It is probably easier to be snobbish as you create art. If you choreograph to an idea that comes to mind, it would probably be easy [to turn into a work] if you use skilled dancers. It is more difficult to put a work together by bringing on stage that are closer at hand.
What are your future plans for overseas performances?: In January [2009] we perform at the Japan Society [in New York] and in February we have a US tour of our work E/G . I will be going with the musician Toshio Kajiwara and the video artists ROKAPENIS. In Mach BABY-Q will be going to Nimes, France for the second time. After that there is a program in Spain in May that is now in the talks. This will be a re-production of the work I did with the French artist I mentioned earlier. And then we will go to Norway in October. In Norway they are asking me to do ALARM! , and I am thinking of doing it in a new version. I like the work and I think this would be a good opportunity to rework it.
You always seem to be on a tight schedule.: Yes. And in between these engagements I will also be performing in Japan. I had to cancel some performances of VACUUM ZONE when I got injured recently, so I definitely want to make up for that!
VACUUM ZONE is truly an awesome work, so we definitely want to see your comeback performances.: It was very frustrating to have to miss those performances. So I will certainly be doing them.

Watashi wa sosorareru / I am aroused
The female dancers dance wildly, as if rediscovering the hidden physical texture and feel of being aroused. Women who look in the mirror, apply makeup and make servants of men. The hand that slides over the body in a costume like flesh-colored film … there, beyond that hand what is it we see that is truly aroused? Premiered 2008. Planned to be presented again in August 2009 at the Kichijoji Theater, Tokyo.
Photo: Yoshikazu Inoue

GEEEEEK
Prostitutes, gays, dwarfs, domesticated animals, a geeko with her head on backwards, all kinds of geeky people with some kind of mental or physical abnormality thrash around dangerously in a dark world of dilapidation. Like nocturnal wild animals that in the dark grow at times vicious, or become sexual slaves … what is played out here is a taboo world where creatures seek not fictitious but real love. Premiered 2006.

Yoko Higashino solo dance
VACUUM ZONE
This Yoko Higashino solo dance work brings together in collaboration the artist OLEO, who constructs objet works from gathered refuse like plastic bottles, iron filings or parts from factories, the former BABY-Q musician Natiho Toyota and the VJ artist ROKAPENIS. Is the dark black hole dug in the center of the stage a vacuum space. The geometrically shaped objet hanging overhead constructed of refuse and quivering with roar of sound emitted gets sucked into the hole along with all the other debris.
Photo: Banri

MATAR O NO MATAR
Billed as BABY-Q + Musicians, this is an evolving improvisational work in which Higashino and BABY-Q collaborate each time with different musicians and DJs, all of whom are cutting edge contemporary leaders in their own right. The dance of BABY-Q and the video installation of ROKAPENIS create an other-worldly atmosphere. It premiered in August 2008 with Masaya Nakahara, Atsuhiro Ito, Hiraku Suzuki, L?K?O, KILLER-BONG, Kleptomaniac and Kamataro Niji (DJ) performing on the first day and World’s end girlfriend, kenichi matsumoto (sax), mujika easel (vocals) and Okiishi (DJ) performing on the second day. A second production was performed in September 2008 at the site of the former Osaka ship-building yard and included destructive action featuring a fire-breathing tank created by DESTROYED ROBOT. In 2009 there will be further evolutions of this work with new musicians.

ALARM!
The body of the woman gouges out blood and feelings in a shocking work that might be sounding an alarm for female sexuality. A young woman, like an embodiment of Alice in Wonderland, shares a dark space with a giant robot that moves on compressed air and other machinery in a grotesque atmosphere. Amidst an abundant use of strobe light and noise, Higashino’s dancing body is magnificent to see. This work won the “Choreographer of the Next Generation ‘NEXTAGE’” grand prize of the Toyota Choreography Awards 2004.

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