Suzushi Hanayagi
Encyclopedia
,born in Osaka
, Japan
, in 1928, is a Japanese dancer and choreographer. She found her way in the international art world through her mastery of more than three Japanese classical dance theater forms and experimental performance art
forms. For over fifty years she actively performed, taught and choreographed in classic Japanese dance forms and contemporary collaborative multimedia performance works. She appeared in Japan, the United States
and Europe
as a choreographer. She collaborated on many of famed director and designer Robert Wilson
’s most revered works created during the years 1984 through 1999.
school of dance founded in Japan’s nineteenth century Edo Period
. At the age of twenty she became a natori
, receiving her Hanayagi name, after mastering 100 dances. She subsequently began studying with Takehara Han, a master dancer based in Tokyo
who developed her singular classic salon style related to mai styles started in Osaka and Kyoto
during the Edo Period, and incorporating techniques related to Noh theater. Interested in these more abstract and poetic styles, Ms. Hanayagi later added studies with Yachiyo Inoue, headmaster of the Inoue
school, a Kyoto based dance style utilized by geisha
s, with whom she continued to study until 2000, when she ceased actively performing.
Ms. Hanayagi began studying modern dance
techniques in Tokyo in the early 1950s, and presented her first modern choreography concert there in 1957, with music by John Cage
and contemporary Japanese and European composers. After seeing exhibitions of works by such artists as Jackson Pollock
and Willem de Kooning
and hearing that artists like Robert Rauschenberg
were dancing, she became interested in experiencing the new arts scene happening in New York City
.
At the beginning of the 1960s, Ms. Hanayagi arrived in the United States
as a cultural exchange visitor under programs sponsored by the Martha Graham School and Japan Society. Also during the 1960s, she participated in the performance experiments happening at Anna Halprin
’s workshops in the San Francisco Bay Area
and in New York City with Fluxus
and at the Judson Dance Theater
. There, she began to collaborate with Carla Blank. Over seventeen years they created fourteen dance theater works, which they performed in New York City through 1966, and then in Japan and the San Francisco Bay Area.
She remained a New York resident for most of the 1960s, where in 1962 she met and married visual artist Isamu Kawai, returning to Osaka in 1967 to be near her family for the birth of their son, Asenda Kiuchi. She re-established Osaka as her main residence again in 1969, to have her family’s help raising him after their separation and divorce.
Almost yearly, following her return to Japan, she presented classical dance performances in Osaka and Tokyo, frequently at Tokyo’s National Theatre. These were either solo concerts or with her sister Suzusetsu Hanayagi and niece Suzusetsumi Hanayagi, as were her classic dance tours in the United States and Europe
. In addition, nearly every year from the early 1980s through 1999, she continued to present solo performances of her original work, mainly at the now closed Jean Jean Theatre in Tokyo. These works also often involved collaborations with other artists, including videographer Katsuhiro Yamaguchi, writers Heiner Muller
and Ishmael Reed
, composers Nettie Simons, David Byrne
, Takehisa Kosugi
, and Hans Peter Kuhn, and visual artists Hirata and Yasuo Ihara.
From 1984 and continuing throughout the 1990s, Ms. Hanayagi served as the choreographer for over fifteen seminal productions and projects by stage director and designer Robert Wilson. Their collaborations were mostly large-scale theater and opera productions presented internationally, beginning with the Knee Plays, premiered at the Walker Art Center
in Minneapolis as part of Wilson’s multi-sectioned work, The Civil Wars: A Tree Is Best Measured When It Is Down. Among other artistic collaborations that occurred throughout her career, Ms. Hanayagi appeared with performance artists Yoko Ono
and Ayo
, and in works directed by filmmaker Molly Davies
, choreographer/filmmaker Elaine Summers
and director Julie Taymor
, besides serving as coach and choreographer for classic dance performances by the popular Japanese actress Shiho Fujimura
.
Now ill with Alzheimer's disease
, Suzushi Hanayagi presently resides in a special care facility in Osaka, Japan. In 2008, her artist friends gathered together to create a multidisciplinary live performance portrait, KOOL-Dancing In My Mind, a poetic monument fueled by their wish to help guarantee her legacy as a great dancer and choreographer. Incorporating 6 live dancers in reconstructions of her choreographic collaborations from works with Blank and Wilson, besides archival photographs, videos of her in performance, excerpts from various published interviews and unpublished letters to Blank, and recent images of her head, hands and feet by Richard Rutkowski, it was first shown at New York City’s Guggenheim Museum
in their 2009 Works & Process Series and developed further at Guild Hall in East Hampton
, and was given its international debut at Berlin
's Akademie der Kunste
in September 2010. Also in 2010, a related 26 minute documentary film SUZUSHI HANAYAGI, A Moving Life, by Richard Rutkowski, premiered on ARTE TV in France and Sundance Channel in the U.S., and his hour length film, The Space in Back of You, to premiere in January, 2012 at Lincoln Center’s film festival, Dance on Camera.
"[My work] is like a diary. My work is to observe myself and to receive outside stimulation or experiences. I compose my thoughts from these sources. When I used to live in New York I felt a conflict in using separate ways, because the people that I worked with were in different worlds. After returning to Japan I started to study classic dance form again. This time I tried a different way to work. I like it very much. So I feel very natural when I’m doing it. It resolved the conflict. I can use two worlds of dance without mixing. I don’t know why I came to admire the conflict. It may be because I become dull or generous. Anyway, I become two worlds with one world. I don’t criticize this in myself."
In a 1986 interview while in residence at American Repertory Theatre
in Cambridge, Massachusetts
, Hanayagi commented: “When I do classical dance, I don’t want to change the movement. I don’t want to put my own expression, my own ego, into the classical dance tradition. When I studied with my teacher one-on-one, I felt something very much like Zen meditation; I felt very pure, I didn’t feel anything about my own ego or expression."
Robert Wilson has said he discovered, from working with Hanayagi, that abstract movement can generate meaning and that movement can be a counterpoint to language
. Hanayagi helped him open up the vocabulary of the gesture and opened Wilson’s eyes to the importance of feet and the connection of the body to the ground, impacting the ways Wilson’s actors stand and move through space, using their entire bodies to convey meaning. Without her influence, he would not have been able to master the literary texts and operatic pieces that have become such a focus of the latter part of his career.
In an interview published in Japan in the book Odori Wa Jinsei (Dance Is A Life, 2003), Hanayagi was asked why she could work with mixed traditions again and again when working with Robert Wilson. And she answered, "All that I learned from the teachers has become my flesh and blood. And when I am asked to choreograph, it all comes out. When I worked on the choreography for Bob Wilson’s Le Martyre de Saint Sebastien
, I felt so much responsibility I couldn’t sleep the night before -- I was thinking so hard about what I was doing. It’s not modern dance
, it’s not ballet
. It isn’t anything. It’s my original work. Yet it’s not mine. It is what was given to me by my teachers."
Osaka
is a city in the Kansai region of Japan's main island of Honshu, a designated city under the Local Autonomy Law, the capital city of Osaka Prefecture and also the biggest part of Keihanshin area, which is represented by three major cities of Japan, Kyoto, Osaka and Kobe...
, Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
, in 1928, is a Japanese dancer and choreographer. She found her way in the international art world through her mastery of more than three Japanese classical dance theater forms and experimental performance art
Performance art
In art, performance art is a performance presented to an audience, traditionally interdisciplinary. Performance may be either scripted or unscripted, random or carefully orchestrated; spontaneous or otherwise carefully planned with or without audience participation. The performance can be live or...
forms. For over fifty years she actively performed, taught and choreographed in classic Japanese dance forms and contemporary collaborative multimedia performance works. She appeared in Japan, the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
and Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
as a choreographer. She collaborated on many of famed director and designer Robert Wilson
Robert Wilson (director)
Robert Wilson is an American avant-garde stage director and playwright who has been called "[America]'s — or even the world's — foremost vanguard 'theater artist'". Over the course of his wide-ranging career, he has also worked as a choreographer, performer, painter, sculptor, video...
’s most revered works created during the years 1984 through 1999.
Background and Career
Suzushi Hanayagi was born Mitsuko Kiuchi, in Osaka, Japan, in 1928. At the age of three she started her dance training with her aunt, Suzukinu Hanayagi, learning the Hanayagi style, a traditional KabukiKabuki
is classical Japanese dance-drama. Kabuki theatre is known for the stylization of its drama and for the elaborate make-up worn by some of its performers.The individual kanji characters, from left to right, mean sing , dance , and skill...
school of dance founded in Japan’s nineteenth century Edo Period
Edo period
The , or , is a division of Japanese history which was ruled by the shoguns of the Tokugawa family, running from 1603 to 1868. The political entity of this period was the Tokugawa shogunate....
. At the age of twenty she became a natori
Natori
-Places:*Natori, Miyagi, a city in northern Japan*Natori River, a river in northern Japan*Natori District, Miyagi, a former district in Miyagi Prefecture, Japan*Natori Station, an East Japan Railway Company station-People:...
, receiving her Hanayagi name, after mastering 100 dances. She subsequently began studying with Takehara Han, a master dancer based in Tokyo
Tokyo
, ; officially , is one of the 47 prefectures of Japan. Tokyo is the capital of Japan, the center of the Greater Tokyo Area, and the largest metropolitan area of Japan. It is the seat of the Japanese government and the Imperial Palace, and the home of the Japanese Imperial Family...
who developed her singular classic salon style related to mai styles started in Osaka and Kyoto
Kyoto
is a city in the central part of the island of Honshū, Japan. It has a population close to 1.5 million. Formerly the imperial capital of Japan, it is now the capital of Kyoto Prefecture, as well as a major part of the Osaka-Kobe-Kyoto metropolitan area.-History:...
during the Edo Period, and incorporating techniques related to Noh theater. Interested in these more abstract and poetic styles, Ms. Hanayagi later added studies with Yachiyo Inoue, headmaster of the Inoue
Inoue
Inoue is the 17th most common Japanese surname. It can also be romanized as Inouye.- People :In politics or business:...
school, a Kyoto based dance style utilized by geisha
Geisha
, Geiko or Geigi are traditional, female Japanese entertainers whose skills include performing various Japanese arts such as classical music and dance.-Terms:...
s, with whom she continued to study until 2000, when she ceased actively performing.
Ms. Hanayagi began studying modern dance
Modern dance
Modern dance is a dance form developed in the early 20th century. Although the term Modern dance has also been applied to a category of 20th Century ballroom dances, Modern dance as a term usually refers to 20th century concert dance.-Intro:...
techniques in Tokyo in the early 1950s, and presented her first modern choreography concert there in 1957, with music by John Cage
John Cage
John Milton Cage Jr. was an American composer, music theorist, writer, philosopher and artist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde...
and contemporary Japanese and European composers. After seeing exhibitions of works by such artists as Jackson Pollock
Jackson Pollock
Paul Jackson Pollock , known as Jackson Pollock, was an influential American painter and a major figure in the abstract expressionist movement. During his lifetime, Pollock enjoyed considerable fame and notoriety. He was regarded as a mostly reclusive artist. He had a volatile personality, and...
and Willem de Kooning
Willem de Kooning
Willem de Kooning was a Dutch American abstract expressionist artist who was born in Rotterdam, the Netherlands....
and hearing that artists like Robert Rauschenberg
Robert Rauschenberg
Robert Rauschenberg was an American artist who came to prominence in the 1950s transition from Abstract Expressionism to Pop Art. Rauschenberg is well-known for his "Combines" of the 1950s, in which non-traditional materials and objects were employed in innovative combinations...
were dancing, she became interested in experiencing the new arts scene happening in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
.
At the beginning of the 1960s, Ms. Hanayagi arrived in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
as a cultural exchange visitor under programs sponsored by the Martha Graham School and Japan Society. Also during the 1960s, she participated in the performance experiments happening at Anna Halprin
Anna Halprin
Anna Halprin helped pioneer the experimental art form known as postmodern dance and referred to herself as the breaker of modern dance. Halprin, along with her contemporaries such as Trisha Brown, Simone Forti, Yvonne Rainer, John Cage, and Robert Morris, collaborated and built a community based...
’s workshops in the San Francisco Bay Area
San Francisco Bay Area
The San Francisco Bay Area, commonly known as the Bay Area, is a populated region that surrounds the San Francisco and San Pablo estuaries in Northern California. The region encompasses metropolitan areas of San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose, along with smaller urban and rural areas...
and in New York City with Fluxus
Fluxus
Fluxus—a name taken from a Latin word meaning "to flow"—is an international network of artists, composers and designers noted for blending different artistic media and disciplines in the 1960s. They have been active in Neo-Dada noise music and visual art as well as literature, urban planning,...
and at the Judson Dance Theater
Judson Dance Theater
Judson Dance Theater was an informal group of dancers who performed at the Judson Memorial Church in Greenwich Village, Manhattan New York City between 1962 and 1964. It grew out of a dance composition class taught by Robert Dunn, a musician who had studied with John Cage...
. There, she began to collaborate with Carla Blank. Over seventeen years they created fourteen dance theater works, which they performed in New York City through 1966, and then in Japan and the San Francisco Bay Area.
She remained a New York resident for most of the 1960s, where in 1962 she met and married visual artist Isamu Kawai, returning to Osaka in 1967 to be near her family for the birth of their son, Asenda Kiuchi. She re-established Osaka as her main residence again in 1969, to have her family’s help raising him after their separation and divorce.
Almost yearly, following her return to Japan, she presented classical dance performances in Osaka and Tokyo, frequently at Tokyo’s National Theatre. These were either solo concerts or with her sister Suzusetsu Hanayagi and niece Suzusetsumi Hanayagi, as were her classic dance tours in the United States and Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
. In addition, nearly every year from the early 1980s through 1999, she continued to present solo performances of her original work, mainly at the now closed Jean Jean Theatre in Tokyo. These works also often involved collaborations with other artists, including videographer Katsuhiro Yamaguchi, writers Heiner Muller
Heiner Müller
Heiner Müller was a German dramatist, poet, writer, essayist and theatre director. Described as "the theatre's greatest living poet" since Samuel Beckett, Müller is arguably the most important German dramatist of the 20th century after Bertolt Brecht...
and Ishmael Reed
Ishmael Reed
Ishmael Scott Reed is an American poet, essayist, and novelist. A prominent African-American literary figure, Reed is known for his satirical works challenging American political culture, and highlighting political and cultural oppression.Reed has been described as one of the most controversial...
, composers Nettie Simons, David Byrne
David Byrne
David Byrne may refer to:*David Byrne , musician and former Talking Heads frontman**David Byrne , his eponymous album*David Byrne , Irish footballer*David Byrne , English footballer...
, Takehisa Kosugi
Takehisa Kosugi
is a Japanese composer and violinist associated with the Fluxus movement.Kosugi studied musicology at the Tokyo University of the Arts and graduated in 1962....
, and Hans Peter Kuhn, and visual artists Hirata and Yasuo Ihara.
From 1984 and continuing throughout the 1990s, Ms. Hanayagi served as the choreographer for over fifteen seminal productions and projects by stage director and designer Robert Wilson. Their collaborations were mostly large-scale theater and opera productions presented internationally, beginning with the Knee Plays, premiered at the Walker Art Center
Walker Art Center
The Walker Art Center is a contemporary art center in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. The Walker is considered one of the nation's "big five" museums for modern art along with the Museum of Modern Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum and the Hirshhorn...
in Minneapolis as part of Wilson’s multi-sectioned work, The Civil Wars: A Tree Is Best Measured When It Is Down. Among other artistic collaborations that occurred throughout her career, Ms. Hanayagi appeared with performance artists Yoko Ono
Yoko Ono
is a Japanese artist, musician, author and peace activist, known for her work in avant-garde art, music and filmmaking as well as her marriage to John Lennon...
and Ayo
Ayo
"Ayo!" is an R&B/Go-go song by American singer-songwriter Mýa and features DJ Kool. The track was produced by Chris Henderson for Harrison fourth studio album Liberation. Ayo! was written by Chris Henderson, Mýa, and Charlie Smalls....
, and in works directed by filmmaker Molly Davies
Molly Davies
Molly Davies is a British playwright originally from Norfolk but now living in London.A graduate of the university of Kent at Canterbury, she is currently writing and works part-time as a teacher....
, choreographer/filmmaker Elaine Summers
Elaine Summers
Elaine Summers American choreographer, experimental filmmaker, and intermedia pioneer.Summers was a founding member of the workshop-group that would form the Judson Dance Theater and significantly contributed to the interaction of film and dance, as well as the expansion of dance into other related...
and director Julie Taymor
Julie Taymor
Julie Taymor is an American director of theater, opera and film. Taymor's work has received many accolades from critics, and she has earned two Tony Awards out of four nominations, the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Costume Design, an Emmy Award and an Academy Award nomination for Original Song...
, besides serving as coach and choreographer for classic dance performances by the popular Japanese actress Shiho Fujimura
Shiho Fujimura
Shiho Fujimura is a Japanese actress. She was given a Special Prize for her career at the 2008 Yokohama Film Festival.-External links:** -References:...
.
Now ill with Alzheimer's disease
Alzheimer's disease
Alzheimer's disease also known in medical literature as Alzheimer disease is the most common form of dementia. There is no cure for the disease, which worsens as it progresses, and eventually leads to death...
, Suzushi Hanayagi presently resides in a special care facility in Osaka, Japan. In 2008, her artist friends gathered together to create a multidisciplinary live performance portrait, KOOL-Dancing In My Mind, a poetic monument fueled by their wish to help guarantee her legacy as a great dancer and choreographer. Incorporating 6 live dancers in reconstructions of her choreographic collaborations from works with Blank and Wilson, besides archival photographs, videos of her in performance, excerpts from various published interviews and unpublished letters to Blank, and recent images of her head, hands and feet by Richard Rutkowski, it was first shown at New York City’s Guggenheim Museum
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum is a well-known museum located on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City, United States. It is the permanent home to a renowned collection of Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, early Modern, and contemporary art and also features special exhibitions...
in their 2009 Works & Process Series and developed further at Guild Hall in East Hampton
East Hampton (village), New York
The Village of East Hampton is a village in Town of East Hampton, New York. It is located in Suffolk County, on the South Fork of eastern Long Island...
, and was given its international debut at Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
's Akademie der Kunste
Akademie der Künste
The Akademie der Künste, Berlin is an arts institution in Berlin, Germany. It was founded in 1696 by Elector Frederick III of Brandenburg as the Prussian Academy of Arts, an academic institution where members could meet and discuss and share ideas...
in September 2010. Also in 2010, a related 26 minute documentary film SUZUSHI HANAYAGI, A Moving Life, by Richard Rutkowski, premiered on ARTE TV in France and Sundance Channel in the U.S., and his hour length film, The Space in Back of You, to premiere in January, 2012 at Lincoln Center’s film festival, Dance on Camera.
Dance Styles and Legacies
In a 1986 interview by Japanese Dance magazine editor Roku Hasugawa, Suzushi Hanayagi said:"[My work] is like a diary. My work is to observe myself and to receive outside stimulation or experiences. I compose my thoughts from these sources. When I used to live in New York I felt a conflict in using separate ways, because the people that I worked with were in different worlds. After returning to Japan I started to study classic dance form again. This time I tried a different way to work. I like it very much. So I feel very natural when I’m doing it. It resolved the conflict. I can use two worlds of dance without mixing. I don’t know why I came to admire the conflict. It may be because I become dull or generous. Anyway, I become two worlds with one world. I don’t criticize this in myself."
In a 1986 interview while in residence at American Repertory Theatre
American Repertory Theatre
The American Repertory Theater is a professional not-for-profit theatre in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1980 by Robert Brustein, the A.R.T. is known for its commitment to new American plays and music–theater explorations; to neglected works of the past; and to established classical texts...
in Cambridge, Massachusetts
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Cambridge is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States, in the Greater Boston area. It was named in honor of the University of Cambridge in England, an important center of the Puritan theology embraced by the town's founders. Cambridge is home to two of the world's most prominent...
, Hanayagi commented: “When I do classical dance, I don’t want to change the movement. I don’t want to put my own expression, my own ego, into the classical dance tradition. When I studied with my teacher one-on-one, I felt something very much like Zen meditation; I felt very pure, I didn’t feel anything about my own ego or expression."
Robert Wilson has said he discovered, from working with Hanayagi, that abstract movement can generate meaning and that movement can be a counterpoint to language
Language
Language may refer either to the specifically human capacity for acquiring and using complex systems of communication, or to a specific instance of such a system of complex communication...
. Hanayagi helped him open up the vocabulary of the gesture and opened Wilson’s eyes to the importance of feet and the connection of the body to the ground, impacting the ways Wilson’s actors stand and move through space, using their entire bodies to convey meaning. Without her influence, he would not have been able to master the literary texts and operatic pieces that have become such a focus of the latter part of his career.
In an interview published in Japan in the book Odori Wa Jinsei (Dance Is A Life, 2003), Hanayagi was asked why she could work with mixed traditions again and again when working with Robert Wilson. And she answered, "All that I learned from the teachers has become my flesh and blood. And when I am asked to choreograph, it all comes out. When I worked on the choreography for Bob Wilson’s Le Martyre de Saint Sebastien
Le martyre de Saint Sébastien
Le martyre de Saint Sébastien, L 124 is a musical work by the French composer Claude Debussy.Written in 1911, the work—a five-act musical mystery play on the subject of Saint Sebastian -- was produced in collaboration with Gabriele d'Annunzio and designed as a vehicle for Ida Rubinstein...
, I felt so much responsibility I couldn’t sleep the night before -- I was thinking so hard about what I was doing. It’s not modern dance
Modern dance
Modern dance is a dance form developed in the early 20th century. Although the term Modern dance has also been applied to a category of 20th Century ballroom dances, Modern dance as a term usually refers to 20th century concert dance.-Intro:...
, it’s not ballet
Ballet
Ballet is a type of performance dance, that originated in the Italian Renaissance courts of the 15th century, and which was further developed in France and Russia as a concert dance form. The early portions preceded the invention of the proscenium stage and were presented in large chambers with...
. It isn’t anything. It’s my original work. Yet it’s not mine. It is what was given to me by my teachers."
Solo Works, partial listing
- 1962:
- Song of the Soil
- Spirit of the Wood
- Without Color
- Ekagra
- Flying God
- Womb
- Action
- 1976: Clown
- 1978: Unkind Trotsky, with Down Town Boogie Woogie Band
- 1979:
- Nonsense
- Kore I
- 1980: Kore II
- 1981: Kore III
- 1982: Americium 231, with music composed by Nettie Simon and Carlos SantanaCarlos SantanaCarlos Augusto Alves Santana is a Mexican rock guitarist. Santana became famous in the late 1960s and early 1970s with his band, Santana, which pioneered rock, salsa and jazz fusion...
- 1984: Americium 95
- 1985: Americium 3958, with David Byrne music
- 1986: Americium 225
- 1987: Americium '87
- 1989: Americium 225 '89, with composer/artist Hans Peter Kuhn
- 1990: Americium 1931, with composer/artist Hans Peter Kuhn
- 1996: Americium Die, with composer/artist Hans Peter Kuhn
- 1997: Americium/ E.M., with Conjure I, music to texts by Ishmael Reed
- 1998: Americium '98: Black Road to the Vanishing Point, with Conjure II, music to texts by Ishmael Reed
- 1999: Americium '99: Blue of Dance, Picasso blue & Yves Klein blue, based on concept by Ishmael Reed
Collaborations with Carla Blank
- 1964: Rainbow #4, Fluxus event with Ay-O
- 1965: Spaced
- 1966:
- Wall St. Journal
- Sidelights
- 1971-73: Work
- 1973:
- Ghost Dance
- Shadow Dance
- 1974:
- Crowd, with film by Sekio Imura
- The Lost State of Franklin, collaboration with Ishmael Reed
- 1976: Animuls
- 1977: Trickster Today
- 1979-1981: Kore at Eleusis
Collaborations with Robert Wilson
- 1984: The Knee Plays, from the CIVIL warS, a collaboration also with composer David Byrne
- 1986:
- Alceste, based on Euripides’ play, with prologue text by Heiner Muller and epilogue music by Laurie AndersonLaurie AndersonLaura Phillips "Laurie" Anderson is an American experimental performance artist, composer and musician who plays violin and keyboards and sings in a variety of experimental music and art rock styles. Initially trained as a sculptor, Anderson did her first performance-art piece in the late 1960s...
- Hamletmachine, a collaboration based on Heiner Muller’s text
- Alceste, based on Euripides’ play, with prologue text by Heiner Muller and epilogue music by Laurie Anderson
- 1987:
- Death, Destruction and Detroit II
- The Forest, also with composer David Byrne
- 1988:
- Le Martyre de Saint Sebastien
- Pelleas et Melisande
- 1989:
- La Femme a la Cafetiere, a film with Ms. Hanayagi as featured performer
- De Materie
- Orlando
- 1990:
- King Lear
- Alceste, Puccini’s opera
- 1992: Dr. Faustus Lights the Lights, from Gertrude SteinGertrude SteinGertrude Stein was an American writer, poet and art collector who spent most of her life in France.-Early life:...
’s text - 1993: Madame Butterfly, an opera by Puccini
- 1999: Death, Destruction and Detroit III: the days before
- 2009: Kool, Dancing in my Mind, also with Carla Blank and Richard Rutkowski
Other multimedia collaborations with Suzushi Hanayagi as choreographer, partial listing
- 1983: Movements, the first collaboration with videographer Katsuhiro Yamaguchi
- 1988: Arrivals & Departures, a collaboration conceived and directed by Molly Davies,with music composed and performed by Takehisa Kosugi
- 1987: Bitwin, Dance in Media, collaboration with Katsuhiro Yamaguchi, including their video “Ms. Hands and Feet”
- 1988: Oedipus Rex, directed by Julie Taymor with the Japan Philharmonic directed by Seiji OzawaSeiji Ozawais a Japanese conductor, particularly noted for his interpretations of large-scale late Romantic works. He is most known for his work as music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and principal conductor of the Vienna State Opera.-Early years:...
- 1994: Sansho the Bailiff. Directed by Andrzej WajdaAndrzej WajdaAndrzej Wajda is a Polish film director. Recipient of an honorary Oscar, he is possibly the most prominent member of the unofficial "Polish Film School"...
with sets and costumes by Eiko IshiokaEiko Ishiokais an Oscar-winning costume designer, known for her work in stage, screen, advertising, and print media, and has been called "Japan’s leading art director and graphic designer," though she now works primarily in New York City....
, lighting by Jennifer TiptonJennifer TiptonJennifer Tipton is a lighting designer. She has designed for dance, theater and opera.In 1958, she graduated from Cornell University...
, sound by Hans Peter Kuhn, and choreography by Suzushi Hanayagi. Workshops for a live stage performance version based on the film, in fall 1993 at the Brooklyn Academy of MusicBrooklyn Academy of MusicBrooklyn Academy of Music is a major performing arts venue in Brooklyn, a borough of New York City, United States, known as a center for progressive and avant garde performance....
. A smaller scale workshop was mounted in Los AngelesLos ÁngelesLos Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
in spring 1994. Plans to produce the play on Broadway were postponed indefinitely.