Zan Yamashita

Zan Yamashita

Born in Osaka in 1970, Yamashita began his career as a choreographer and director in the mid-1990s. Representative works include Soko ni Kaite Aru (It is written there), in which he provided the audience with scripts in booklet form as guides to the performance that the audience follows, turning pages as signaled from the stage;Toumeiningen (Invisible man), in which the movements of the dancers are put into words by a narrator;Seki o shitemo hitori (It’s just me coughing), in which the dancer’s movement is enactment of beating symbols and haiku poems projects on a screen at the back of the stage;Funanoritachi (The Sailors), where the dancers perform on a moving raft-like platform; and Dobutsu no Engeki (Animal Theater), a dance work that gives the impression of animals acting out a play. Yamashita is the winner of the 2004 Kyoto Art Center Performing Arts Prize. His works have been performed overseas at the 2007 Live Arts Bangkok (Thailand), the 2008 Kunsten Festival des Arts (Belgium), the 2009 Istanbul International Contemporary Dance and Performance Festival (Turkey), the 2010 TBA Festival (Portland, Oregon) and most recently in Japan at the 2010 Postmainstream Performing Arts Festival (Tokyo). As an actor, he has performed in Kikoeru, Anata? (2005) directed by Shogo Ota and in Ikishima (2010) directed by Yukichi Matsumoto. Recently he has done collaborative works with foreign artists including the Thai dancer Pichet Klunchun and the Malaysian director Fahmi Fadzil. Yamashita’s performance workshops are also well received.