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Recent Choreographic works

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Friday Dinner: Tomoyo Yamada's MFA Project

Friday Dinner: Tomoyo Yamada's MFA Project

Friday Dinner: Tomoyo Yamada's MFA Project November 27 – December 4, 2020 Friday Dinner is a choreographic compilation of everyday gestural movement and those found in codified dance forms. Using videotaped footage of dancers enjoying dinner, exchanging casual conversations and sharing childhood memories, we extracted natural gestural movement from the dancer’s bodies. These idiosyncratic gestures were then layered with dynamic, refined, and established dance movement often found in dance institutions and academia. Heavily relying on recorded dinner settings and interviews, the work unravels a complexity of movement and virtuosity of presence, highlighting the aesthetics of both trained and natural human movement and offering potential hybrids between these forms for contemporary performance. Created by Tomoyo Yamada Performers: Shion Skye Carter, Anja Graham, Kevin Locsin, Charlotte Telfer-Wan, and Brian Postalian. Sound: Kimia Koochakzadeh-Yazdi Lighting: Hans Hsieh and Claudia Chan Videography: Sam Mason and Bianca Cheung Costumes: Meagan Woods Special Thanks: Brian Palaschuk, Judith Garay, and Rob Kitsos Presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the Degree of Master of Fine Arts at Simon Fraser University. This work will be presented and has been developed on the unceded traditional territories of the Coast Salish peoples of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations.
Focal Rift
10:34
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Photo by Sam Mason

Stuck in 2020

Supported by the Canada Council of the Arts and The Dance Centre

Stuck in 2020 is a short film that manifests feelings of isolation, and frustration, outcomes of our time in quarantine. Through movement, music, and set design we created a world that depicts what the year 2020 has meant to us. Clala Dance Project thanks all our collaborators, Canada Council of the Arts and The Dance Centre for their support.

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Clala Dance Project

Choreography: Tomoyo Yamada

Dramaturgy: Ana Daria Vieru

Producer: Charlotte Telfer-Wan

Dancers (in order of appearance):

Charlotte Telfer-Wan, Kestrel Paton, Athena Lewis. Jennifer Aoki

Videographer: Sam Mason

Sound: Norasea

Set design: Troy McLellan

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Photo by Xinyue Liu

Friday Dinner

Work-in-progress showing at Pandemonium

August 30, 2020

Massey Theatre in New Westminster

Friday Dinner is a dance performance focused on different modes of human movement. The work is a choreographic compilation of everyday gestural movements and those found in codified dance forms. Using videotaped footage of dancers enjoying dinner and sharing childhood memories, we extracted natural gestural movements from the dancer’s bodies. These idiosyncratic gestures were then layered with dynamic, refined, and established dance movements often found in dance institutions and academia. Heavily relying on recorded dinner settings and interviews, the work unravels a complexity of movements, highlighting the aesthetics of both trained and natural human movements and offers potential hybrids between these forms for contemporary performance. 

Choreography: Tomoyo Yamada

Dancers: Kevin Locsin, Anja Graham, Shion Carter, Charlotte Telfer-Wan

Performer: Brian Postalian

Sound: Kimia Koochakzadeh-Yazdi

Dramaturg: Brett Palaschuk

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Photo by Lula-Belle Jedynak

yane ura

Open Stage at the Dance Centre

February 11, 2020

seams, MFA Spring Show

May 10-11, 2019

A dance work on embodied energies and histories of abandoned objects - whether they are discarded due to malfunction, lost interest or are simply outdated. The work explores personal experiences of attachment, sentimentality and displacement in relationship to commodities and material objects.

Choreography: Tomoyo Yamada

Dancers: Ana-Daria Vieru, Athena Lewis, Charlotte Telfer-Wan

Sound: Stefan Nazarevich

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Photo by Kirk Chantraine, The Snipe News

Emergency!!

Powell Street Festival Telethon

August 1, 2020

The Winter Celebrations at the Anvil Centre

December, 2019

Dancing on the Edge Festival

July 5-6, 2019        and more

Originally choreographed in 2012, this comical piece has been performed and re-created several times in Japan. Illustrating the frustration, impatience and hopelessness everyone must have experienced at least once in their lifetime, the artists invites the audience into a moment filled with quirk and humor.

Choreography: Tomoyo Yamada

Dancers: Jennifer Aoki, Kestrel Paton, Tomoyo Yamada, Charlotte Telfer-Wan

Sound: Julian Telfer-Wan

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Photo by Rosie Anza-Burgess

Focal Rift

Can Opener

November 16, 2018

Choreography/Performer: Tomoyo Yamada

Music: Kourosh Ghamsari-Esfahini

Visual: Caitlin Almond

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Photographer unknown

Femme Fasade

Selected Winning Work at the All Japan Dance Festival in Kobe

Recreated by students in University of North Carolina, School of the Arts 

                                                 and more

Based on social expectations towards women in Japan, this piece illustrates the emotional conflict I felt moving to the country in my teens after spending my primary years in a western society. There is a famous saying in Japanese "Derukugi wa utareru" (The nail that sticks out gets hammered down). Any deviance is met with resistance, and "Femme Fasade" is an autobiographical piece facing challenges in an unfamiliar society.

Choreography: Tomoyo Yamada

Dancers (Original cast 2013): Megumi Tsuchida, Akiyo Kubota, Chihiro Koyama, Yuki Cho, Kanoko Yamamoto, Risako Iwatani, Fuka Matsubara, Tomomi Mishima, Natsumi Nishioka, Moe Yokouchi, Kana Nakamura, Ai Hirooka, Tomoyo Yamada

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Photo by Jessica Schmitt

shimai

REVERBDance Festival in New York

November 4-6, 2016

Inspired by childhood memories and close relationships with each of our siblings. 

Choreography and Performed by Chihiro Nukuto and Tomoyo Yamada

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Photo by Jessica Schmitt

kikoeteimasuka

Selected work at the All Japan Dance Festival

in 2012

REVERBDance Festival in New York

November 6-8, 2016

Based on the afterworld of Japanese Buddhism, the piece “kikoeteimasuka” was first shown in 2012. The transparent cloth represents a spiritual river “The River of Sanzu” which is told to be dividing us and the deceased.

                                               

Choreography: Tomoyo Yamada

Dancers (Original cast 2013): Megumi Tsuchida, Akiyo Kubota, Chihiro Koyama, Yuki Cho, Kanoko Yamamoto, Risako Iwatani, Fuka Matsubara, Tomomi Mishima, Natsumi Nishioka, Moe Yokouchi, Kana Nakamura, Ai Hirooka, Tomoyo Yamada

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Photographer unknown

Hungover from my Twenties

 

Kansai Buyo-Renmei 

April 30, 2016

 

A collaboration piece with dancers from 10 universities, “Hungover from my twenties” demonstrates the social issues of “karoshi” in Japan. “Karoshi”, which can be translated to “over work death” is occupational sudden mortality mainly caused by heart attacks and strokes due to stress.

                                               

Choreography: Tomoyo Yamada

Dancers : Asuka Iida, Kao Uno, Eimi Kawai, Riko Shimada, Aya Nakanishi, Ayana Nishikai,

Moe Nishida, Yume Nishimura, Rina Matsumoto, Mai Jyotake, Hana Chono, Ayane Yasunaga, Misaki Nagao, Mizuki Okumura, Urara Wada, Risako Iwatani, Akiyo Kubota, Chihiro Araki, Rina Nakanishi, Sayaka Yamashita

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