Three Questions for ... Min Tanaka

Author
A somewhat more comprehensive questions for Min Tanaka:

1) You have returned to the Archa theatre after seven years, in the meantime you have been performing in Asian countries most of all. Is there any difference in how the audiences react to your dancing in Asia and in Europe?
It's hard to say because in Asia I danced most of all in front of strangers and I was glad if they stopped to watch me dance. As for Prague, I have a specific relationship with this city and people that come to my performances are those I have been in touch with since 1980s. These spectators come to the theatre because they want to see me, so the atmosphere is completely different. In Paris it is the same. If only one spectator in the audience knows me, the difference is tangible. And I feel it too. It is indeed completely different from dancing in front of someone who knows nothing about you.
So I guess the performance is probably different too...
Yes, although there is a concept it is always different in all aspects. Although I tour all over the world with one particular project, I was always a bit nervous everywhere. And then, the time is completely different too. What people imagine in their minds when I dance varies according to the location, culture, and especially, time.
Are you nervous still these days?
Well, yes, I am. A lot. But I feel that people in Prague understand me more than ever, I cannot describe it with words.

2) What is the idea behind  the candle and rope? You employed these two things both in the solo Locus Focus and in the duo Step into Shadow...
I think society these days tends to show everything in a way that is clearly visible to everyone. Japanese hi-vision TV tries to show things in the way one really sees the world - but is it really so? Do people really see this way and not some other? That's what has always intrigued me. Do people really believe only those things they can see with their very eyes and what they do not see, they do not believe? Isnt the world made up mostly of things that we cannot see? How do we see love? Or faith? To materialize this idea a candle is an appropriate means I think. It can create a boundary between the seen and the sensed on the stage.
And the rope? Is it some sort of link?
A rope is just a rope. But it can represent various things too. For fishermen, farmers, sailors, for the people who live in towns – it can symbolize different things to anyone. Who in the audience during my performance thought it was just a rope? Everyone sees a symbol in it... and everyone might see a different one.
In the second performance, the duo, does the rope suggest a boundary between the outer and inner world of a family relationship?
Yes, it's like a curtain people use to create a privacy with in their rooms. A boundary, even an artificially created one brings to our lives some dynamics, some dimension. We create boundaries to get over them. If there is nothing left to go beyond the space around us becomes dull, yet strange.

3) Is your partner Shiho Ishihara one of your students? How many students have you got in your group now?
Yes, we know each other for over twenty years. I have dissolved the group, I work on my farm alone. And I also mostly dance alone or with Shiho. A lot of people from all over the world kept coming to my place, everyone wanted to learn how to dance and become famous, some of them studied for a while and then left... and Ive had enough of that. I have created everything myself, so they can search and learn things themselves too.
When do you plan to come back to the Czech Republic again?
I do not. I really have a lot of work and I would like to devote all my free time to my farm. And farmers do not have so much free time. I have to deal with everything on my own.

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