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Dance Diversions - Japan Diary
Diversions, the Dance Company of Wales, has built up a reputation over the last 20 years for its international collaborations. During 2002 the company worked with Tokyo based choreographer, Shigehiro Ide. He made Unspoken Agreement, which Diversions toured throughout the UK. He brought his company Idevian Crew to perform in Wales and the collaboration culminated in November with Diversions on a ten-day tour of Japan, November 15 - 25. Associate Director Ann Sholem shares her tour diary in Dancing times:

Friday 15th
After two days of travelling, I arrive Tokyo Airport and take bullet train to Nagoya. Minibus out to Kani City where we do our first performance.

Saturday 16th
Crew get in. Never seen so many technicians on one stage in my life – three from Diversions, four from Idevian Crew (Shigehiro Ide’s dance company), plus 20 from the venue. Everyone busy with floor, lighting, sound etc.
Brand new theatre – only eight shows since opening in July. State-of-the-art space with all the latest and best equipment – amazing. Computer terminals in the foyer for free internet access – busy all day and a great idea for getting people into the building.

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<small>[ 04 February 2003, 09:05 PM: Message edited by: Stuart Sweeney ]</small>

Diversions
By Judith Mackrell for The Guardian


Diversions may officially be the Dance Company of Wales, but they've travelled a long way from home to buy their latest programme - to Finland for Tommi Kitti's Five Beginnings, and to Japan for Shigehiro Ide's Unspoken Agreement.
But neither of these works lives up to the advance reputation of their creators - and neither sits comfortably on the bodies and personalities of the eight young dancers who perform them.

On the surface, Kitti's Five Beginnings is a pure dance piece, which routes its performers round a circuit of long fluid lines and surprise formal interventions. One dancer's lone trajectory is disrupted by a sudden hesitation, or by a second dancer who tangles with their movement and forces it off course. Several dancers, performing in isolation, are drawn into quasi-ritual patterns, the choreography uniting them for a few minutes before scattering them apart.

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