New York Butoh Institute
presents
A Free Virtual Butoh Festival Series
Oct 1-30, 2021
available at www.vimeo.com/vangeline
Live and in-person performances at
Triskelion Arts
October 27-30 at 8pm
October 24 to October 31st, 2021:
ANZU FURUKAWA
Four Dances
Available at www.vimeo.com/vangeline
FREE
4 DANCES BY ANZU FURUKAWA
Video U-Matic, 1986, color, 35 min.
Film By Regina Ulwer.
Regina Ulwer, documentary filmmaker, was born in Wellerode, Germany. She studied at the Free University Berlin in Journalism and Theatre Studies, (MA). She received a scholarship in Women Studies from San Francisco State University. Her work spans documentary film, cultural exchange projects, educational films on topics of art, everyday life, general and specific communication techniques, sustainable development, and projects on climate awareness and protection.
ANZU FURUKAWA ( Japanese 古 川 あ ん ず, Furukawa Anzu ; born February 28, 1952 in Tokyo Prefecture ; † October 23, 2001 in Berlin ) was a Japanese butoh dancer and performance artist. SIn 1973, she started worked as a choreographer, performer and dancer in various groups in Japan (including the Butoh-Compagnie Dairakudakan) and Europe.
Anzu Furukawa began her dance career at the age of ten. Between 1962 and 1970 she studied classical ballet with Umeko Inoue at the School of Ballet in Tokyo and modern dance between 1969 and 1970 with Zenko Hino . [1] At the end of the 1960s, the spirit of optimism in the student movement also gripped high school graduates and high school students from Tokyo high schools.
The peace movement, anti-American protests and a burgeoning rebellion against the restrictive establishment united young people in the Japanese metropolises. [2] In the late 1960s, Furukawa was forced to exmatriculate with a group of other classmates because of their participation in student riots [3] at Tokyo Metropolitan Tachikawa High School. However, a short time later she succeeded in getting a place at the Conservatory of Music at Tōhō-Gakuen University (桐 朋 学園 大学, Tōhō Gakuen Daigaku ). From 1972 to 1975 she studied composition and piano under Irino Yoshirō and increasingly turned to avant-garde art and performance Scene too.
The second development movement of Japanese Butoh, which seamlessly followed the work of the founding fathers Hijikata Tatsumi and Ōno , took place in the midst of the social upheavals of the 1970s in Japan, in an atmosphere characterized by student unrest , street fighting and barricades, performance acts and agitprop . In 1974 Furukawa joined the legendary butoh company Dairakudakan under Akaji Maro and stayed there until 1979 together with Tetsuro Tamurafounded the avant-garde DanceLoveMachine (1979–86) ensemble. She was considered artistically versatile and was well versed in both classical and modern dance, in her dance work there were collaborations with Carlotta Ikeda, Murobishi Ko and Ushio Amagatsus Sankai Juku.
In 1986 she visited Berlin with the DanceLoveMachine Ensemble at the invitation of Künstlerhaus Bethanien [4] and started a European tour from there. The dance company Dance Butter Tokyo , founded in Tokyo , whose members were largely recruited from its dance school DANCE ANZU SCHOOL, got a German branch Dance Butter Freiburg in Freiburg.
In 1995 she was seen in Hisaya Iwasa's auteur film "Petite Hanako: the actress who captured Rodin's heart" in the role of the dancer Ōta Hanako , the film celebrated the same year at the Montreux Film Festival ( International Electronic Cinema Festival, Tokyo / Montreux) Premiered and won the award for best documentary film.
Anzu Furukawa died in 2001 at the age of 49 from complications from cancer. [5]
“ Every time I dance in the street, I look at the sky. Even if there is no breeze on earth, the wind stirs in the high sky. Suddenly I swing myself on the wind and look down from above at my other self below, who is looking at the sky. My self on earth is now just a point. The shadows of the people are already fading, and now the city is no bigger than a coffee cup ... I keep floating away until I finally end up in a quiet bar on another planet. "*
Awards
She has received scholarships and prizes, including from the Goethe Institute Tokyo, The Japan Foundation, Japan Arts Council (日本 芸 術 文化 振興 会), the Alfred Kordelin Foundation , The Art Council of Province of Central Finland (Keski-Suomen taidetoimikunta), the Astro- Labium Prize, The International Electronic Cinema Festival in Montreux and the Cologne Theater Prize.
*Furukawa, Anzu, Four dances in the West Berlin Academy of the Arts, video and book, Berlin, 1986 Alexander Verlag.
This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts, and by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.