Music for the dance project EXUSIAI
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EXUSIAI has just been released on the New Tone label. For availability information, please click here. To listen to selected excerpts from EXUSIAI, click below. People with slower modem connections should use the "28.8k" option. EXUSIAI: Violence (ISDN connections) EXUSIAI: Violence (28.8k connections) EXUSIAI: Moondance (ISDN connections) EXUSIAI: Moondance (28.8k connections)
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Akira Kasai is a dancer
and choreographer in the butoh style who in the 1960's often
performed with the acknowledged founders of butoh, Tatsumi Hijikata
and Kazuo Ohno. In the 1970's he founded Tenshi-Kan and worked
actively with it for a decade. But in the 1980's, Mr Kasai stopped
dancing, closed Tenshi-Kan and moved to Germany to study "Eurythmy",
a form of dance founded by German mystic philosopher Rudolf Steiner.
"Eurythmy" is not so much about physical acts of moving
as it is about a system of harmonious body movements to the rhythm
of both words and music. In 1994, Mr Kasai,invigorated by his
studies, re-emerged and resumed his active career. He lives in
Tokyo and has created a number of new works that have been performed
in Japan, Europe and the USA. The music for EXUSIAI was created in a 6 week period, the first 4 weeks of which while Carl Stone was in living at the Djerassi Artist-In-Residence Program, in Woodside California. Thematically, EXUSIAI is a dance about the special kind of life-force that exists in the inorganic matter of the mineral. An example of this life force would be a crystal, which in a way grows inside of a rock-crystal or tourmaline. As a mineral life-force, it contrasts in opposition to the biological life-force such as in plants. An object that is "dead" organically can in fact be alive from the viewpoint of Exusiai. |