IN-VOCATION たまおこし Performance in FRAME: biennial dance festival
21(Tue) and 28(Tue) March 2023
3 shows ONLY at Dancehouse
Performed by Yumi Umiumare, Kayo Tamura and Kyoko Amara
Installation by Jacqui Stockdale
Sound by Ai Yamamoto
Punk, playful, and exuberant, this is an intimately epic and profanely sacred ritual.
When: 21 (Tue) March 7pm and 28(Tue) March 7pm and 9pm ( 3 shows ONLY )
Where: Dancehouse 150 Princes St Carlton North, Victoria
BOOKING
Entangling old world Kabuki mystique with volumetric 3D video, “IN-VOCATION たまおこし” summons the sacred power of female archetypes and deities.
In collaboration with a clairvoyant from Japan, local artists, and an international guest performer, Yumi Umiumare opens a Jujutsu 呪術 (Magic) portal to discover the colourful characters of OKUNI — an initiator of Kabuki Japanese theatre.
Evolving out of Yumi’s solo work, “Buried TeaBowl – OKUNI”, the team of mystics return to prod their collective memories and discover the many essences of the divine feminine.
Punk, playful, and exuberant, this is an intimately epic and profanely sacred ritual that incites an audience revolt of the spirit.
CREDIT
Choreographer: Yumi Umiumare
Performers: Yumi Umiumare, Kayo Tamura (Theatre Group Gumbo, Osaka), Kyoko Amara (Taiyosha, Iwate)
Visual Artist: Jacqui Stockdale
Sound Designer: Ai Yamamoto
3D Video: EMD Studio, Centre for Transformative Media Technologies, Swinburne University of Technology.
Original score from “Buried TeaBowl – Okuni”: Dan West
Original video from “Buried TeaBowl – Okuni”: Takeshi Kondo
Image credits: “IN-VOCATION たまおこし” (2023), Yumi Umiumare. Photo by Vikk Shayen.
Buried TeaBowl- OKUNI
Buried TeaBowl -OKUNI is an intimate and epic solo performance installation bringing together dance, text, song and tea ceremony with stunning film captured in 2021 during the lockdown.The work is inspired by the Japanese historical female dancer and shaman Okuni, who initiated Kabuki theatre in the early 1600s, which women were banned from performing after these times.
INSTALLATION - PERFORMANCE - TEA
Buried TeaBowl -OKUNI is an intimate and epic solo performance installation bringing together dance, text, song and tea ceremony with stunning film captured in 2021 during the lockdown.The work is inspired by the Japanese historical female dancer and shaman Okuni, who initiated Kabuki theatre in the early 1600s, which women were banned from performing after these times.
At the height of her powers, Yumi Umiumare, Melbourne performance legend and Australia’s leading Butoh artist, unearths precious sacred female power which has been buried throughout history.Yumi channels the multifaceted character of Okuni who was so powerful, yet fragile and complex, to reawaken her spirit through excavating these buried stories and myths.
CREATIVE TEAM
Created and Performed : Yumi Umiumare
Cinematographer/ Editor : Takeshi Kondo
Composer/ Sound Designer : Dan West
Lighting designer: Emma Lockhart-Wilson
Dramaturg/ Maude Davey
Provocateur : Moira Finucane
Producer : Kath Papas productions
Photographer: Vikk Shayen
Graphic design : Mariko Naito
Calligraphy: Hisako Tsuchiya
Publicity : Diana Wolfe
The show was premiered at the BlackCat Gallery in May 2022.
Date/Time:
Thu 5 May 8:30pm – Preview
Fri 6 May 8pm – Opening
Sat 7 May 8pm
Sun 8 May 6pm
Wed 11 May 8pm
Thu 12 May 8pm
Fri 13 May 8pm
Sat 14 May 8pm
Sun 15 May 6pm
Duration: 80 mins
Tickets:
Full: $35 / Con: $25
Superiori-TEA: $50 incl. drink on arrival
Address:
BlackCat Gallery
420 Brunswick St
Fitzroy 3065
Vic Australia
PHOTO CREDITS
Vikk Shayen (Above)
Takeshi Kondo (Below)
SUPPORT & AKCNOWLEDGEMENTS
This season is supported by the Besen Family Foundation and BLACKCAT Gallery.
Buried TeaBowl a new solo work in progress 2021
Yumi is creating a new solo work Buried TeaBowl, an interdisciplinary work with dance, text, song and poetry, inspired by Japanese female dancer/shaman, Okuni in 1600’s. The work in progress was completed in Aug 2021, and will be premiered in a live and digital performance in 2022.
photo by Vikk Shayen
Yumi's new solo work Buried TeaBowl, a work in progress, Aug 2021
Buried Tea Bowl is a new solo interdisciplinary work in development by Yumi Umiumare, bringing together dance, text, song and poetry with tea ceremony to create an intimate and epic work with both live and digital iterations.
Buried Tea Bowl channels the character of Okuni, a Japanese female shaman who initiated Kabuki during the Edo period (1600s). Kabuki comes from the word ‘Kabuku’, meaning bent or out of the ordinary, and was regarded as a subversive non-art form, passionately expressing ugliness and beauty. Later women were banned from performing Kabuki – the male performers who took over the art form can be seen as the first Japanese Drag Queens. Even though she was one of the most powerful female figures in theatre history, not many people know about Okuni, even in Japan.
Combining Yumi’s practice of Japanese tea ceremony, which flourished at the same period as Okuni was alive, she is choosing the ‘tea bowl’ as a creative metaphor of precious sacred female power which was buried under history.
Creative Team for Creative Development 2021
Created and Performed by Yumi Umiumare
In collaboration with
Cinematographer/ Editor : Takeshi Kondo
Composer/ Sound Designer : Dan West
Dramaturg : Maude Davey
Provocateur : Moira Finucane
Vocal Artist : Emma Bathgate
Shamisen Artist : Noriko Tadano
Photographer : Vikk Shayen
Producer : Kath Papas productions
This project has been assisted by
The Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts, its arts funding and advisory body
City of Darebin, Cultural Infrastructure Grants
Abbotsford Convent Foundation, Pivot 2021
Tea Break
TEA BREAK is a new full-length solo work in development, combining dance, spoken words and multimedia. Blending Butoh, Tea and visual theatre, Yumi explores the space between rituals and daily routines of drinking tea.
TEA BREAK is going to be a Yumi's new full-length work, combining dance, spoken words and multimedia. Blending Butoh, Tea and visual theatre, Yumi explores the space between rituals and daily routines of drinking tea. She shifts into the abstract and experiments with the forms and structures of tea ceremony, moving from the sedate to the dramatic, real to surreal, and playful to macabre, a journey into life and death, evoking the spirit of Butoh.
TeaBreak, 30 min solo dance version, was shown in March 2017, as a part of Evocation of Butoh in Asia TOPA, and creative next development for visual elements will be in 2018.
To find out more about showing this work, get in touch with yumi.
Feedback quotes from
the creative development
“Grounded and surreal, totally unpredictable, with some extraordinary physicality in the movements. I loved the humour and the tension and the danger and the energy and how the piece was so utterly unpredictable. A real pleasure and inspiration”
“Cup cracks, composure crumbles in a brush stroke of sickly green”
“Witnessing Yumi's ongoing tea ceremony developments was wonderful, challenging, dangerous and exciting. …Enjoyed the subversion of the formal ceremony and the domestic connotations; and how the transformations reconnected to the elemental, natural, spiritual and physical.“
“What’s the…?” Pieces for small spaces at Lucy Guerin Inc.
Yumi was one of the 5 choreographers of the 5 days performance season of PIECES FOR SMALL SPACES at Lucy Guerin Inc, 13-17 Dec 2017.
PIECES FOR SMALL SPACES 2017, 13-17Dec 2017
5 CHOREOGRAPHERS, 5 NEW SHORT DANCE WORKS, 5 DAYS OF PERFORMANCES.
AMRITA HEPI | MARIAA RANDALL | NANA BILUS ABAFFY | RHEANNAN PORT | YUMI UMIUMARE
Pieces for Small Spaces is Lucy Guerin Inc’s annual in-house presenting season, offering a unique opportunity for five choreographers to challenge their practice, take risks and present a new short dance work as part of a professional performance season. This years program has been co-curated by Artistic Director Lucy Guerin, Resident Director Prue Lang and artist Mariaa Randall.
Choreographed by Yumi Umiumare
In collaboration with the performers: Gregory Lorenzutti, Lilian Steiner, Leisa Prowd
Music by Dan West and Murcof
Photograph by Bryony Jackson
EnTrance
EnTrance is a critically acclaimed full-length solo work with multimedia and installations within the metaphor of ‘the near shore’ of life and ‘the far shore’ of death. Award-winning dancer Yumi Umiumare performs the mystical conundrum of ‘the space between’ amid the hubbub of our city-life. ‘EnTrance opens heart, body and soul to the transformations that direct the human spirit.’ Canberra Times 2011
EnTrance is a critically acclaimed full-length solo work with multimedia and installations within the metaphor of ‘the near shore’ of life and ‘the far shore’ of death. Using electronic costumes – practical television mask, fairy light fabric – karaoke and the decay to nothingness of the flour-encrusted butoh body, award-winning dancer Yumi Umiumare performs the mystical conundrum of ‘the space between’ amid the hubbub of our city-life.
White, vaulting installation, splits the space into the real and imagined, where Umiumare can play with the audience in fun Karaoke near-space or recede through the porous curtain to the far, into the psychological claustrophobia of mirrored city-scapes where full-wall media projections crowd.
Umiumare performs six seamless scenes exploring the personal and universal; like cultural distinctions of crying, depersonalisation in the metropolis, public/personal identity and transcending through death. The soundscape of the city isolates the living, accompanies the dead. Entrance assembles award-winning collaborators, Moira Finucane, Bambang Nurcahyadi, Naomi Ota and Ian Kitney and was itself nominated for a Green Room Award. EnTrance is the culmination of Umiumare’s collaborations, a diva focusing her powers for audiences to share in transcendence.
Credits
Created and performed by Yumi Umiumare
Dramaturge Moira Finuicane
Media Artist Bambang Nurcahyadi Karim
Installation Artist Naomi Ota
Sound Designer Ian Kitney
Costume Designer David Anderson
Lighting Designer Kerry Ireland
Performance History
April 2012 Performance Space season in Sydney
June /July 2011 The Street Theatre, Canberra
October 2010 NORPA (Lismore) & Brisbane
supported by Kultour’s 2010 Strategc initiatives
October 2009 OzAsia Festival
Aug – Sep 2009 Premiere in Malthouse Theatre, Melbourne
TECHNICAL SPECS
Please click here for technical specification and download the document
Please click here for En Trance Plan Set
Photo by Jeff Busby and Heidrun Lohr
Reviews
“..a mystical collision of butoh and theatre.”
“EnTrance is a wonderfully expressive union of music and text, image and movement, bound together by irresistible logic of dreams.”
The Age
“All the world’s experiences, on a stage”
“she carries her audience on a journey through life, life after death, mental despair, physical delight, meditative sequences, cabaret breakouts, sweet sadness and ghoulish madness”
Jill Sykes (Review Link)
“..an Impassioned and beautiful piece, constantly rich and surprising in its emotional range, and finally very moving.”
The Australian
” Yumi Umiumare is a living treasure””Her solo show EnTrance delights and disturbs with its compelling blend of movement, dialogue and music. Movements of joy and comedy are counterpoint for the grotesque tradition of butoh.
Herald Sun
“..a mystical collision of butoh and theatre.”
“EnTrance is a wonderfully expressive union of music and text, image and movement, bound together by irresistible logic of dreams.”
The Age
“.. challenging, moving, and the kind of theatre experience you rave to your friends about. Australia is fortunate to have such a talent as hers enriching our dance culture.”
Arts Hub
“…gut-felt provocation of passion and emotion.”
Aussie theatre
“This is one of the standouts of OzAsia (festival)”
Independent Weekly Adelaide
” a fascinating production that will move you emotionally and engage you intellectually”
GLAM ADELAIDE
“EnTrance opens heart, body and soul to the transformations that direct the human spirit.”
“Confronting, evocative and artistically innovative”
Canberra Times
See more Dance Work
INORI-in-visible
A solo dance work influenced from the personal experience from Hanshin Earthquake in 1996.The work was devised as prayer for the event. Directed and Performed by Yumi Umiumare. Stage & Set design Anthony Pelchen.
A solo dance work influenced from the personal experience from Hanshin Earthquake in 1996.The work was devised as prayer for the event.
Directed and Performed by Yumi Umiumare
Stage & Set design Anthony Pelchen
PERFORMANCE HISTORY
2003 February Traces Post Butoh Festival, Copenhagen, Denmark
2000 August Dancehouse, Melbourne, Australia
2000 5th year memorial of Hanshin Earthquake, Town Hall, Vega Hall, and Women’s Centre in Takarazuka City
Reviews
“Yumi Umiumare was not animal on the stage, on the contrary, she seemed like a deformed human being. As with Kitt Johnson, they both posses the ability to make their extreme bodies disappear and transform into Butoh power. Or to make the earth disappear. ..”
Anne Middlelboe Christensen – Information, Copenhagen
REALTIMES Review
Photo by Brad Hick
Sakasama
Sakasama: the reverse world. The two worlds of Life and Death are described as two shores; one is ‘the near shore’ (the world of the living), and the other is ‘the far shore’ (the world of after-death). A river flows between them. ‘The far shore’ is a reversed world: it is the reverse of the world of the living and everything is upside down.
Artist Statement
The original inspiration of this work came from the ancient Japanese belief in Sakasama: the reverse world. The two worlds of Life and Death are described as two shores; one is ‘the near shore’ (the world of the living), and the other is ‘the far shore’ (the world of after-death). A river flows between them.
‘The far shore’ is a reversed world: it is the reverse of the world of the living and everything is upside down. I explore the juxtaposition of my presence in Australia, experimenting with the neutrality of emotion and colour, and to manipulate rhythms.
I am in the maze.
I am wandering around the space between,
crossing the shores between here and there.
The world here looks normal and the world here looks abnormal.
The world there looks abnormal and the world there looks normal.
I am surrounded by these unknown voids.
The void creates some fluid and transparent shapes.
I dive into them and they disappear.
Dual, triple, multiple existences of my body floats here and there.
I keep wandering this unknown space between.
Credits
Media Art by Bambang Nurcahyadi
Original Video and Sound edited by Bambang Nurcahyadi and Ian Corcoran
Original Videography by Richard Back, Anthony Pelchen and Yumi Umiumare
Reviews
(The work is） bringing out a strong and weirdly accessible work, in which caricature is often an entrance door for a psychic depth of despair, loneliness, social world and nocturne world -constantly reminding us that obscurity pervades the trivial beauty of daily life-.
Idanca.net online review, by Sheila Ribeiro 2010
PERFORMance history
2009Sakasama(multimedia performance) in Pulse, @ Rooftop in Melbourne
2009Sakasama-reversed world(solo dance short work), I-DANCE Festival Hong Ko
2007Sakasama(collaboration with Bambang Nurcahyadi) Exhibited in OzAsia Festival at Arts Space in Adelaide Festival Centre
Digital image by Bambang N Karim
ZeroZero
ZeroZero was the second in a triptych and has premiered in Melbourne, in Feb 2013. Collaborated between Tony Yap, Yumi Umiumare and Matthew Gingold, ZeroZero explores the spaces between fullness and emptiness, visibility and invisibility. It was presented in Bogota, Columbia (2014) and Melbourne International festival (2014).
ZeroZero was the second in a triptych and has premiered in Melbourne, in Feb 2013. Collaborated between Tony Yap, Yumi Umiumare and Matthew Gingold, ZeroZero explores the spaces between fullness and emptiness, visibility and invisibility. It was presented in Bogota, Columbia (2014) and Melbourne International festival (2014).
PERFORMANCE HISTORY
2014 Melbourne International Festival as a part of Dance Territories
2013 EATRO MAYOR, Bogata, Columbia
2013 Melbourne Season at fortyfivedownstairs
2011 Sydney Season as a part of Return to Sender at PerformanceSpace
2010 Tour to Arts Island Festival (Indonesia)and Melaka Festival(Malaysia)
2010 Initial creative development in Japan(Koyasan, Osore zan) and Malaysia(Melaka)
Reviews
‘..remarkable interplay of difference and harmony, touching, as their titles suggest, upon the sacred, the profane, rituals and the notion of ‘now.’ Realtime 2014
‘…strong, powerful and incredibly moving’
Arts Hub on ZeroZero at ‘Return to Sender’, Performance Space, November 2011
Photos by Heidrun Lohr
PERFORMERS
Creators/dance performers: Tony Yap, Yumi Umiumarec
Creator/media, sound, light performer: Matthew Gingold
Additional design and production realisation: Paula van Beek
Producer: Kath Papas Productions
See more Dance Work
WHITE DAY DREAM 白昼夢 SERIES
A series of experimentations of visual poetries, film work and physical theatre, inspired by Yumi’s own experience of her brother who had a cerebral hemorrhage. Is it really happening right in front of us or are we daydreaming? What if our piled up memories were suddenly erased? Our memories are like a heritage but our brain could hemorrhage.
White Day Dream（白昼夢） series
Our memories are like a heritage but our brain could hemorrhage.
White Day Dream（白昼夢）is a series of experimentations of visual poetries, film work and physical theatre, inspired by Yumi’s own experience of her brother who had a cerebral hemorrhage. Like a dream itself, the work try to recalling viewer’s emotion and subconscious, and portrays physical and psycho-emotional realms where things are at once unexpectedly linked and disconnected. Our idea of ‘reality’ blurs fluctuates and we try to substitute it with our own visionary fantasy and imagination.
Is it really happening right in front of us or are we daydreaming?
What if our piled up memories were suddenly erased?
PERFORMANCE HISTORY
Experiment #4
白い昼の夢（Japanese Title)White DayDream
Created and performed by local performers
at Odorini Ikuze Feitival (we are gonna dance festival) in Hakata, Japan,Feb 2017
Experiment#3
Collaboration with Weave Theatre (Oct-Dec 2015)The showing 16 December 2015
Experiment#2
FOLA Performance @Arts House As a part of Festival of Live Art
Experiment#1
Feb 2014 White Day Dream Video works
Credits for the photography
Photo by Will Taylor and NObu from IETM, 2014, Artshouse.
Performance by Gregory Lorenzutti, Tim Crafti, Satori Fukuzimi and Yumi Umiumare
E-motion in motion
In collaboration with Indonesian Australian media artist Bambang Nurcahyadi to experiment and create visual poetries- rich tapestry and narratives through ‘e-motion tracking’ process, dividing into different chapters. The audience/viewer’s interactions will be also tested in the process to add another layer that provokes the their expressions and emotion.
This is a project in development, collaborated with media artist Bambang N Karim, to experiment and create visual poetries- rich tapestry and narratives through ‘e-motion tracking’ process, dividing into different chapters. The audience/viewer’s interactions will be also tested in the process to add another layer that provokes the their expressions and emotion.
The juxtapositions of body and landscape are portrayed through digital moving images .It was originally coming from a Japanese ancient belief of Life and Death. In the world of ‘after-death’, the whole world exists in reverse from the world of the living. It was also to use the metaphor of my daily experiences of living in Australia as the ‘reverse-world’ from Japan, searching own cultural identities. A body interacts with a digital image of body/multiple bodies-digital images appear to enter and exit from the real-time body. The effect creates an eerie world as if spirits are jumping in and out of real-time performing body. Digital images of multiple faces also explored and it provokes my question about our identities-who are we? Where are we coming from?
DEVELOPMENT HISTORY
2012 Melbourne University Student workshop
George Patton Gallery for a showing
2009 A studio Residency, Metro ScreenSydney
Dis-oriental
Using everyday objects as metaphors of ‘loss’, while also collecting residential memories defined by a psycho-emotional space, Yumi takes on the notion of ‘oriental’ in the context of moving and living in “foreign” spaces. The work explores the cracks and spaces between disorientation / destruction & attraction / familiarities.
Winner of ReelDance International Dance On Screen Festival (2008)
Using everyday objects as metaphors of ‘loss’, while also collecting residential memories defined by a psycho-emotional space, Yumi takes on the notion of ‘oriental’ in the context of moving and living in “foreign” spaces. The work explores the cracks and spaces between disorientation / destruction & attraction / familiarities.
Inspired by Japanese architect Shigeru Ban’s emergency cardboard tubing house, Yumi explores the notion that a house, usually an object of permanence, could be specifically designed to provide momentary comfort.
Choreographed and Performed by Yumi Umiumare
Sound Design: Cat Hope
Lighting Design: Richard Vabre
Produced by Hirano Production
This work premiered at Performance Space as a part of Rakini Devi’s project, Women in Transit in 2004.
PERFORMANCE HISTORY
2007 SeptemberTheatre, Adelaide Festival Centre, OzAsia Festival
2006 OctoberSpring Dance program at Dancehouse
2004 July as a premier season of Woman in Transit
Film Project
Choreographed and Performed by Yumi Umiumare
Director Sean O'Brien
Writers Sean O'Brien Yumi Umiumare
Sound designer Darrin Verhagen
Producer Beth Frey
Production Company
Australian Broadcasting Corporation Arts Council of England Australia Council for the Arts Channel Four International Circe Films Pty Ltd
REVIEWS
“….Yumi Umiumare does incredibly intense solo in which her Japanese heritage and butoh dance background provide an irresistible focus for small actions on personal or domestic themes that hint at larger concerns……The transformations is riveting, powered by the knowledge that visual is built on layers of psychological and emotional considerations.”
Sydney Morning Herald 2004
Photo by Heidrun Lohr
