Ikko Tamura

Ikko Tamura

Dairakudakan is one of Japan’s leading Butoh companies, founded in 1972 by Maro Akaji and other butoh artists. The founding members included an impressive number of the leading butoh artists of the day and as they pursued their careers they gave birth to many new groups, in keeping with Akaji Maro’s believe that “each member constitutes a unique school” of butoh. Next year marks the 40th anniversary of Dairakudakan’s founding and its “each member, one school” spirit remains alive. Since the opening of its new “Kochuten” studio in 1998, the young butoh artists of Dairakudakan have competed to present creative new works in studio productions to the “Jarezoku” series (1999-2000) and the “Kochuten Performances” program (since 2001). By the way, “Kochuten” means “another realm,” “another world” or “the world inside a pot that reflects the self,” and is an expression that derives from the Chinese history classic of the Later Han Dynasty.
As the Kochuten series enters its tenth year in 2011, it has seen a total of 38 performances, each planned, choreographed and performed by one of 18 noted butoh artists including Takuya Muramatsu, Kumotaro Mukai, Yuko Kobayashi, Emiko Agatsuma, Toshimi Shioya, Barabbas Okuyama and Naomi Muku. Kochuten series productions have been performed overseas as well, with performances at New York’s Japan Society in 2002 and ’03 and in France in 2007 and ’08.
One of the new stars of this “other realm” of young butoh artists is Ikko Tamura (born 1976). After entering Dairakudakan in 1998, Tamura won the New Artist Award of the 2002 Japan Dance Critics Association Awards for his first Kochuten series work, Butoh Libertine. He is noted for his highly precise and refined directing and the free spontaneity he brings to his unique style of butoh. In addition to his work in butoh, Tamura has performed in a work choreographed by Joseph Nadj and stages directed by Amon Miyamoto, Eri Watanabe, Akira Shirai and Shuji Onodera. He also gives workshops both in Japan and abroad.