He has made the following ballets for the Nederlands Dans Theater:
Garnet (NDT II, Holland Dance Festival, 1999) and A Trilogy, consisting of 3
works that were created in 3 successive years for NDT III: Sight (NDT III,
2000), Windage (NDT III, 2001) and Land (NDT III, 2002). The Japanese Shusaku Takeuchi, born in 1948, studied painting from 1968 to
1971 at the Osaka Art University, and sculpti
ng, graphic art and interior
design at the Yoyogi Design School in Tokyo. During this time, he frequently
performed at happenings and events with a group of young artists. In 1972 he
traveled to Europe to establish himself in the Netherlands. He began by
working with such performers as Japanese Butho dancers Eiko & Koma,
Argentinian choreographer Graziella Martines, Jango Edwards, and many others. His own company, founded in 1974, combined visual art and physical expression. Specialized in mime and dance, it performed mainly in the Netherlands, but
also traveled to Italy and Germany. In between tours, he worked on a project
at the Centre Culturel de Marais in Paris. Eventually the company evolved into
the Shusaku & Dormu Dance Theater. During this period Takeuchi’s artistic interests were heavily influenced
by modern art. His company took part in cultural festivals all over Europe,
performing in a number of cities in France, Spain, Italy, Switzerland and
Germany. In the 1980s the company extended its tours to Eastern Europe, with
performances in Hungary, Poland and the Soviet Union. In fact, Shusaku & Dormu
Dance Theater was the first western company to perform officially in Moscow’s
Red Square. It was during this period that Takeuchi started experimenting with
different art disciplines. In order to explore the possibilities of the human
body, he combined physical expression with the use of computers, sound effects
and virtual reality. His first big stage production, ERA (1982) was performed
in the Netherlands, Canada and several European countries. After the success
of ERA, other big stage productions followed, such as Oblique (1983) and Noon
of the Plant (1985). From 1980 on, he set up specific projects at summer festivals such as
the Freiburg International Theater Festival (1980), the Summer Festival of
Copenhagen (1983), the Oeral Festival on the island of Terschelling in the
Netherlands (1984) and the Kempnagel International Theater Festival in Hamburg
(1986). After Eleven Shades of Grey, which toured through the Netherlands and
Germany (1990), Takeuchi stopped performing himself in order to concentrate on
directing and choreography. As time went on, his productions grew bigger and
more complex. He was also invited by other companies as a guest director and
choreographer, and he began to devote some of his time to teaching. Architectonaal (1990) kicked off a long series of mass site-specific
projects, first with the Dormu Dance Company, and later with a second company,
Shusaku Bodytorium, founded in 1994, which presented physical theater. In
1995, Takeuchi was awarded the Sonia Gaskell Award for The Package. Another
work, Floating Silhouettes (1994), which was performed in an old Amsterdam
harbor, involved no less than one hundred and fifty people. This was followed
by two productions in industrial mausoleums: Reservoir, performed on the ruins
of an old industrial site on a small island near Dordrecht in the south of
Holland (1995) and Bolt (1997), performed in a former shipyard in Amsterdam. (1998) was the first of his theater productions in which text
played an important role.
*******
a news item also by the Nederlands Dans Theater:
22 05 2003 Shusaku Takeuchi's movie `Shelter' inspired on the NDT III ballet
`Land', performed last season (2001/2002) has won two prices. CZECH CRYSTAL
Category 1: Music or dance programmes made for television
SHELTER
NPS Television, Nizozemí Coproducer: BBC, The Arts Council of England, Egmond
Film and Television
Reason: This category presented some very exciting and original programmes to
the jury. The winning programme in this category was conceived and executed
with strong visual imagination, flair and above all a superb sense of
narrative within a small time frame. The Jury felt that this masterpiece-in-
miniature beautifully fulfilled the programme makers´ ambitions for the work. STUDENT PRIZE
SHELTER
Reason: Shelter won the Student Jury Prize because of the skill with which it
turned a random encounter into something poignantly beautiful. In just nine
minutes it followed the progress of one woman's journey from a wet, chilled
isolation into a fierce, magical coupling. The jury felt that the aesthetics
of yellow on black and white were exquisite, and that the camera shots were
framed in such a way as to magnify the intimacy and immediacy of the event. It was art - in its most complete form.
