This self-documentary performance centres on Saori Hala’s late father Ken Hara. Through dance, sound and video recordings from his lifetime, it describes how his long-term absence during her childhood and adolescence created fuzzy zones in the artist’s life and memory. It is an attempt to reconstruct her impressions of her father as well as a discourse on a social issue. Ken Hara was an active musical dancer in the 1960s, the post-war golden years in which Japan was rebuilding itself and its economy boomed. Saori’s memory of her father is vague and tenuous, dance has become an important connection between them. After their brief reunion and her father’s death, she grew curious about his life as a musical dancer, thus embarking on a creative study through surviving works and recordings.
Photo: Kazuhei KIMURA
Saori Hala
Saori Hala is a choreographer and performer based in Berlin and Tokyo. She works with her own body and diverse media, based on a background in dance, design and ecopsychology. Her projects explore the relationship between the social environment and physical body, interweaving reality and fiction on stage while constructing organic and inorganic materials, space and time. The Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011 and the nuclear accident in Fukushima inspired her relocation to Germany, and the start of her research into environment and body. Her works have been performed mainly in Japan and Europe. She has been working as Resident Artist at Dance Base Yokohama since 2020, and Guest Artist in the repertory piece Brüste und Eier at the Thalia Theater in Hamburg, Germany since 2022.
Concept, Performance, Staged Objects, Music Composition and Video Design
Saori HALA
Voice Over
Ken HARA
Staged Objects
Mizuno NAKAMURA, Rion ONAYA, Koki TOI, Yuya YOSHIZAKI
Music Composition
Christophe CHARLES
Costume Design
Mika TOMINAGA
Stage Manager
Yoshiko HARAGUCHI
Lighting Design
Daichi KUTSUMI
Sound Design
Norimasa USHIKAWA
Video Technical Support
Takaki SUDO
Production Manager
Yuko TAKEDA
Video excerpt taken from Japanese movie Asphalt Girl © KADOKAWA (1964)
Performed in English without surtitles, supplemented with screening in Japanese with English subtitles