Solo Work
About
For almost 20 years, Hiroaki Umeda’s focus has been his body in performance space. However, with Umeda, this relationship is never so simple. With a complex and captivating use of light, the relationship of space, time, and the body are synthesised to communicate something greater.
Hiroaki Umeda’s solo work is the foundation of his artistic career. With a personal style that mixes digital imagery, minimalist soundscapes and extremely powerful corporeality, Umeda’s solo works such as Adapting for Distortion (2008), Haptic (2008), Holistic Strata (2011) and Split Flow (2013) have fascinated the public at the best festivals and theatres in the world.
This work is known for its highly holistic artistic methodology which has an important digital component. Umeda considers that dance not only involves physical elements but optical, sensorial and spatial-temporal ones also. Based on his profound interest in choreographic space and time, Umeda has proven his talent as a choreographer, dancer, composer, light designer, stage designer and visual artist.
Production: S20
Solo Work
Intensional Particle
An horizontal line projected on the screen tremors. Suddenly, for an instance, the line drastically multiplies as if to discharge its immanent energy. Similarly, covert energy withheld in Umeda's body is transmitted from the pelvis to the spine, to the arms, and lastly to the digital screen situated at the rear. Hiroaki adapted a special version of Intensional Particle live online for this special period.
Median
In this project Hiroaki explores the choreography of cells, molecular forms and organic synthesis, bringing into human visibility another world of movement, light and sound.
split flow
In this optical dance piece, the artist juxtaposes two distinct physical conditions – dynamic and static – in order to visualize the duality within reality.
Accumulated Layout
In this piece, the texture of the dance movements change in accordance with the layout of lights, that shifts slightly from one temporal segment to the other.
while going to a condition
Umeda sets off from the most general movement—standing—then gradually picks up momentum and, at one point, transcends the ordinary physical status to attain an extraordinary physical aura. From ordinary to extraordinary, then back to ordinary again.
Holistic Strata
Here, all the elements dissolve into the same units of information (pixels) and, by so doing, Umeda seeks an axiom of kinetic movements that exists as the common denominator of all movements.
Assimilating / NEW SOLO
For Umeda, dance and human body are natural phenomena, which is caused by the relationship among various factors. Organic and fluid graphic images created with physics simulation and a human body are connected through movement as a common language. This Hiroaki Umeda’s latest work, in which the body expands and disappears at the same time, is the presentation of the artist’s view and thoughts on the beings of body and movement.
Press
““His aesthetic proposals place dance at the heart of electronic matter and technological changes.””
““Hiroaki Umeda understood and revealed the lingering traces of humanity.”
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