HIROSHI KOIKE'S WORKSHOP

SLOW MOTION Training
Workshop

by hkbp

The theme of this workshop is "Body Awareness" and "How to Cross Boundaries".

In the workshop, Hiroshi Koike guides students through a 60-minute piece of work, starting with a slow-motion exercise to help students develop strong body awareness and a sense of time.

"Slow motion" is an important part of the workshop training, guiding students to focus on the use of their bodies and their feelings. Director Koike instructed the students to move at 1/100th of a second, which helped them to find their centre of gravity and to really feel what they were doing when they moved their bodies.

In addition to self-exploration, the director also helped the participants to feel where the people around them were and how they were acting - this training helped them to find their 'place' on stage.

Furthermore, during the slow-motion training, director Koike also guides the participants to feel the light, sound and vision around them, to develop their creativity and to be able to perform better.

Hiroshi Koike is one of the few theatre directors in the country who knows how to mobilise the strengths of his actors and is adept at using space, rhythm, movement and sound. The interplay of multiple elements is decisive in achieving the imagery he wants.

In his workshop training, he is like a chameleon, ready to subvert the details of what is already there." I want to change" is his mantra. It is painful at first for an actor to overturn a framework that he has worked so hard to rehearse and which already feels "good". But as you change more, you get used to the feeling of subverting yourself at any time.

In order to meet the requirements, the actors have to ensure that they remain internally aware and active during the rehearsal process, translating every fresh instruction from the director into their own performance.

Hiroshi Koike

Director, Playwright, Choreographer

In 1982 Hiroshi Koike founded Pappa TARAHUMARA. He wrote, directed, and choreographed 55 productions with Pappa TARAHUMARA, leading a generation in Japanese performing arts to cross genres of drama, dance, art, and music. In 2012 he launched the Hiroshi Koike Bridge Project (HKBP) with the mission of producing collaborative projects based on education, dissemination, and creativity.

Koike has produced work in 10 countries and his productions have been performed in over 40 countries. He has been invited to collaborate with artists around the world. His workshops that focus on reclaiming the physical body have been presented to professional artists as actor training and to the general public for developing creativity in both Japan and overseas.

He served as the Artistic Director at Tsukuba Cultural Foundation, Chairman of Asian Performing Arts Forum, Committee Member of Japan Foundation (2005 - 2011). He is a professor at Musashino Art University, where he is the first theater director to be appointed in the Department of Scenography, Display and Fashion Design. He is the principal and founder of Performing Arts Institute (P.A.I.), an educational institution for developing artists. He is the author of two books. A collection of essays on the intersection of art and society entitled Listen to the Voice of the Body and his theory of direction entitled Performing Arts Theory - Fushi Kaden for the 21st Century. His first anthology of plays entitled Journey to Night and the End of the World was published in 2018.