Damien Jalet & Kohei Nawa – Vessel

The idea for Vessel by Damien Jalet, in collaboration with the Japanese plastic artis Kohei Nawa, germinated in 2015 during a shared residence at the Villa kujoyama in Kyoto. At the instersection between sculture and choreography, the two art forms meet and become indivisible.

Taking the contradictions of the human body as their starting point, the artists, together with a group of seven dancers, create a fascinating work embracing regeneration and deterioration, solid and liquid, anatomy and mythology. In addition, the Japanese composer Marihiko Hara serves the performance with a captivating score.

Damien Jalet travels the world, imbuing his choreography with exotic imagery, originating in the myths, the religions and the rituals of each country he visists. He succeeds in combining them with the elemental conflict between the body and the spirit of dance. In his sculptures and installations, Kohei Nawa explores different materials and techniques, communicating an organic vision of the world while simultaneously combining image and materiality with impressive success.

The artistic duo instills the scenography with an intriguing breadth of physical properties, ranging from gases, to liquids and solids, in an attempt to create a dynamic fusion between the dance stage and the bodies of the dancers. The distinctive ‘headless’ posture hides the faces of the performers, imposing anonymity in a dissimulation of genre and identity, while insinuating all at once the existence of a nonhuman entity. The vision of the world rendered by such scultural dance transcends the artistic disciplines.