Anzu Furukawa

Anzu Furukawa ( Japanese 古 川 あ ん ず , Furukawa Anzu ; born February 28, 1952 in Tokyo Prefecture ; † October 23, 2001 in Berlin ) was a Japanese butoh dancer and performance artist. Since 1973 she has worked as a choreographer, performer and dancer in various groups in Japan (including the Butoh-Compagnie Dairakudakan) and Europe.

life and work

Anzu Furukawa began her dance career at the age of ten. Between 1962 and 1970 she studied classical ballet with Umeko Inoue at the School of Ballet in Tokyo and modern dance between 1969 and 1970 with Zenko Hino . At the end of the 1960s, the spirit of optimism in the student movement also took hold of high school graduates and high school students in Tokyo high schools.

The peace movement, anti-American protests and a burgeoning rebellion against the restrictive establishment united young people in the Japanese metropolises. In the late 1960s, Furukawa, along with a group of other classmates, was forcibly de-registered at Tokyo Metropolitan Tachikawa High School because of their participation in student riots. However, she succeeded a short time later to get a place at the Conservatory of Music of Tōhō-Gakuen University ( 桐 朋 学園 大学 , Tōhō Gakuen Daigaku ). From 1972 to 1975 she studied composition and piano under Irino Yoshirō and turned increasingly to the avant-garde art and performance scene.

The second development movement of the Japanese Butoh, which seamlessly followed the work of the founding fathers Hijikata Tatsumi and Ōno , took place in the midst of the social upheavals of the 1970s in Japan, in an atmosphere characterized by student unrest , street fighting and barricades, performance acts and agitprop . In 1974 Furukawa joined the legendary Butoh company Dairakudakan under Akaji Maro and stayed there until 1979, when she founded the avant-garde DanceLoveMachine (1979-86) ensemble with Tetsuro Tamura . She was considered artistically versatile and was well versed in both classical and modern dance, in her dance work there were collaborations with Carlotta Ikeda, Murobishi Ko and Ushio Amagatsus Sankai Juku.

Second creative period and move to Europe

In 1986 she visited Berlin with the DanceLoveMachine Ensemble at the invitation of Künstlerhaus Bethanien and started a European tour from there. The dance company Dance Butter Tokyo , founded in Tokyo , whose members were largely recruited from its dance school DANCE ANZU SCHOOL, got a German branch Dance Butter Freiburg in Freiburg.
In 1995 she was seen in Hisaya Iwasa's auteur film "Petite Hanako: the actress who captured Rodin's heart" in the role of the dancer Ōta Hanako , the film premiered that same year at the Montreux Film Festival ( International Electronic Cinema Festival, Tokyo / Montreux ) and won the award for best documentary.

In 2001 Anzu Furukawa died of complications from cancer at the age of 49.

“ Every time I dance in the street, I look at the sky. Even if there is no breeze on earth, the wind stirs in the high sky. Suddenly I swing myself on the wind and look down from above at my other self below, which is looking up at the sky. My self on earth is now just a point. The shadows of the people are already fading, and now the city is no bigger than a coffee cup ... I keep floating away until I finally land in a quiet bar on another planet. "

Choreographies (selection)

Her life's work includes more than 50 dance works and stage pieces, many of which were created in the 1980s and realized in Europe, including works such as Anzu's Animal Atlas , Cells of Apple , Faust II , Rent-a-body and further:

• 1981 Frankenstein's Octopus
• 1981 Le Con de la Renard
• 1984 Mere mood
• 1985 Manhattan Butoh Bourbaki Project
• 1985 The Potlach of Music
• 1985 Anzuology: The Dog, The Elephant, The Bird, The Crocodile Time
• 1987-94 The Insect
• 1989 The Detective from China
• 1989-91 Tonight on the Moon
• 1990 Carmen
• 1991 The Diamond as big as the Ritz
• 1993 Office of Transformation
• 1994/95 The Stick
• 1996 The aftermath
• 1996 Afastem-se vacas que a vida é curta (Lume Teatro - Brazil)
• 1997 Jazz Japan
• 1997-98 L'arrache-coeur
• 1999 Goya - La quinta del sordo

Awards

She has received grants and awards, including a. from the Goethe Institute Tokyo, The Japan Foundation, Japan Arts Council (日本 芸 術 文化 振興 会), the Alfred Kordelin Foundation , The Art Council of Province of Central Finland (Keski-Suomen taidetoimikunta), the Astro-Labium Prize, The International Electronic Cinema Festival in Montreux and the Cologne Theater Prize.

Teaching

In 1991 she accepted the call to the Braunschweig University of Fine Arts , where she took over a professorship for performance and performing arts in the performing arts department (now the Institute for Performative Arts and Education). She taught dance there until 1996, directed happenings and developed choreographies a. a. with her performance project Umwandlungsamt. From the mid-1990s she worked on productions in Scandinavia, particularly in Finland. She was seen as a driving force in the development of the Finnish Butoh scene, her work influencing generations of dancers. As a guest lecturer, she taught at several Finnish universities and created joint productions at the Finnish National Theater in Helsinki, she staged works such as the Rite of Spring (1994) and Bo and Shiroi mizu (1995) with mostly Finnish ensemble members.
Her internationally best-known students include a. Minako Seki , Yuko Kaseki , Takako Suzuki, Yuko Negoro, Kim Itoh.

Filmography

• 1995 "Petite Hanako: the actress who captured Rodin's heart" ( プ チ ト ・ ア ナ コ ロ ダ ン が 愛 し た 旅 芸 人 花子 ), director: Hisaya Iwasa, choreography: Rie Fujima

literature

• Books by and about Anzu Furukawa in Worldcat
• Furukawa, Anzu: 境界 線上 の 佇立 - 二 つ の 「ス ト - ン ・ ブ レ - カ -」 , in: 美術 手 帖 , No. 539, pp. 86-92, 1985, Tokyo ISSN  0287-2218
• Furukawa, Anzu: Four dances in the West Berlin Academy of Arts , video and book, Berlin, 1986 Alexander Verlag. ISBN 978-3-923854-70-7
• Haerdter, Michael; Kawai, Sumie: Butoh - The Rebellion of the Body. A dance from Japan . A publication by Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Alexander Verlag, Berlin 1986 ISBN 3-923854-22-6
• Schlossmacher, Josef: Surprising interfaces: "Comme à la radio" by Anzu Furukawa , in: Tanzdrama Magazin. No. 41 (June 1998), p. 31.
• Welzien, Leonore: Between Heaven and Earth , in: Tanzdrama Magazin. No. 67 (June 2002), pp. 6-8.
• Nichols-Schweiger, Herbert: Butoh - Clarifying Rebellion. Tanzlabor Graz: Texts - Conversations - Photographs, Graz 2003 ISBN 978-3-205-77161-6
• Fraleigh, Sondra: Butoh. Metamorphic Dance and Global Alchemy , University of Illinois, 2010, ISBN 978-0-252-07741-8

Web links

• Balance 2009 "- Homage to Anzu FURUKAWA - Miyoko SHIDA & Mädir EUGSTER
• obituary
• biographical information
• Portrait photos of Anzu Furukawa by Gregor v. Glinski

Individual evidence

1. ↑ http://www.tmcrew.org/arte/danzabuto/furukawa.htm
2. ↑ cf. Archived copy ( memento of the original from August 20, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
3. ↑ on this Tetsuo Kobayashi: 高校 紛争 1969-1970 - 「闘 争」 の 歴 史 と 証言 , Chūōkoron shinsha, Tokyo. 2012, ISBN 978-4-12-102149-6
4. ^ Raimund Hoghe: Japanese Theater in Berlin: The dead begin to walk . In: The time . No. 25/1986 ( online ).
5. ↑ Shroff, Satis, Anzu Furukawa and the Rite of Spring  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Freiburg, 2008.  
6. ^ Furukawa, Anzu, Four dances in the West Berlin Academy of the Arts, video and book, Berlin, 1986 Alexander Verlag.
7. ↑ http://www.berliner-zeitung.de/archiv/keine-ehre-fuer-den-butoh-tanz--anzu-furukawa-mit--goya--traurige-wiedergaenger,10810590,9655638.html
8. ↑ (Engl.) Information about the influence of Furukawa on the Finnish Butoh dance scene ( Memento of the original December 23, 2014 Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link is automatically inserted and not yet tested. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 1.6 MB)  
9. ↑ http://cinema.pia.co.jp/title/ex-162723