Min Tanaka: Locus Focus

When Min Tanaka appeared in Prague in the spring of 1984 it was an event that for many opened a new world. 

The secret Prague performance featured a dancer who had recently been named the Best Dancer of the Empire. Those who responded to the conspiratorial invitation (“Come and don’t tell anyone”) had no idea what they were going to see. Tanaka danced most of the performance naked, his body covered in dark clay and his movements oscillating between emotional outbursts and unbearable slowness, between godlike beauty and brute ugliness. At that time nobody knew that this kind of dancing was called Butó. This was a good thing. These are the best situations for art. The audience perceives it immediately without a priori ideas or prejudices. This is probably why Min Tanaka decided to continue returning to Prague. While in the West he performed in large opera houses, in Communist Czechoslovakia he became a part of the artistic underground.

 

Tanaka is closely connected with the history of the Archa Theatre. Back when its auditorium was still a construction site, Archa staged Tanaka’s version of The Rite of Spring with sets by American sculptor Richard Serra at the National Theatre in Prague and in Bratislava. Two artists, one from the East and the other from the other side of the world – Min Tanaka and John Cale – later created a performance for the grand opening of the Archa Theatre in 1994.

 

When the theatre was destroyed by floods, Tanaka came to Prague to dance a solo show in front of a packed house at the State Opera, and donated the proceeds to the restoration of the theatre. And when Archa was reopened, he performed a ritual dance in the freezing Vltava River to convince it to stop causing destruction and to keep it at bay.

 

Tanaka’s last performance at Archa was more than six years ago. Since that time he has been in Europe only on rare occasions, focussing his attention instead on Asian countries. He has danced in China, Korea, Vietnam and the rain forests of Indonesia. 

 

In recent years he has become a film star. The Twilight Samurai (2002) was nominated for an Oscar and Tanaka was named best actor by the Japanese Film Academy. In House of Himiko (2005) he plays the terminally ill proprietor of a gay hotel and he won numerous awards for the film Map of the Sounds of Tokyo (2009). He recently completed work on the film 47 Ronin, in which he stars alongside Keanu Reeves. The film will be released in November. 

After his travels around the world Tanaka always returns to the mountains of Yamanashi Prefecture where he devotes his time to farming. He believes that dance comes out of the movement of ancient farmers and that farming is the best training for dance. Like farming, the most important condition for dance is direct contact with nature.

 

On May 7 and 8 he will present two solo performances at Archa under the name Locus Focus and on May 9 he will appear together with dancer Shiho Ishihara in the performance Step into the Shadow.

 

Ondřej Hrab