Interview: Colleen Lanki of TomoeArts on kabuki and collaborating
My friend and Vancouver-based dancer, director, writer, and teacher Colleen Lanki was in town for the final performance of Portland State University's kabuki production Chushingura. She is the artistic director of TomoeArts, "a dance theatre company that works between traditions and disciplines" and regularly produces some of the most intriguing and original work I've seen. Colleen kindly agreed to join me in my studio where we talked about the kabuki play, her training in Japan, thoughts on collaborating, and the various projects we worked on together. Included in this recording is music I composed for two of the productions mentioned in the interview - EN: a raincity street dance and Voices of Hiroshima. Working with Colleen has been fun and rewarding especially because we were able to create a number of different shows together. Finding like-minded artists is not as common as I would like, so I'm happy when opportunities arise to work with someone like Colleen.
Voices of Hiroshima
EN3: Community Circles
EN: a raincity street dance
EN: The Procession of Performing Circles