Shinpai Shinaide - Don't worry about us
A moving and atmospheric performance that combines Butoh dance, video and originally composed music. It touches on the deep, human topics of love, grief and acceptance, merging the different elements in a seamless flow of imagery and sound.
Taking inspiration from The Phone of the Wind - a phone booth in Japan where grieving parents, children and friends talk to their lost loved ones – Shinpai Shinaide invites the audience onto an unforgettable emotional journey.
Heartbreaking words that were recorded in the booth open the show. We sit in a dark room while we hear the voices of people expressing their innermost feelings and see the translation scrolling on the white ghostly fabrics that make up the set - “Don’t forget to eat”, “Please let me hear you call me papa”, “Shinpai shinaide - don’t worry about us”.
Words then leave place to arresting video projections, slow mesmerizing dance movements and a compelling soundscape. Images, dance and music merge into one and we are transported into a unique world, a land suspended between fantasy and reality, life and death. Suddenly it’s not about a Japanese phone booth anymore… it is about the human condition, memory and loss, love and death - it is hauntingly universal and deeply personal at the same time.
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Created and produced by Blue Cliff, in co-production with Åbne Scene - Godsbanen (Aarhus) and Bora Bora - Dans og visuelt teater (Aarhus)
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Concept, choreography and dance: Yael Gaathon
Video artist: Masashi Nagara
Composer: Tamar Muskal
Shakuhachi flute: Kojiro Umezaki
Set and costume design: Yael Gaathon
Assistant video artist and graphic design: Ai Sasao
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Light design: Peer Mariboe
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Funded and supported by: Danish Arts Foundation, The City of Aarhus, Augustinus fonden, Toyota Fonden, and Performing Arts Platform
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"It's the great human story, it's our death, the transcendence of the dead, the grief of the survivors, and it is, to say the least, impressive"
DEN 4. VÆG
“… ”Shinpai Shinaide - Don't Worry About Us" is a visually beautiful and positively challenging dance experience… "Shinpai Shinaide" creates an atmosphere … maybe the performance can shift our perhaps too fixed perspective of what performing arts are and can be. ”
Aarhus Stiftstidende
Reumert jury's motivations:
Nomination for Performance of the Year: “… a stage sensory bombardment in this spherical performance … the sounds of the wind were transformed into almost unbearable physical expressions of grief - with the slowness, timelessness and bizarre beauty of butoh dance.”
Nomination for Performer of the Year: “As a performer, Yael Gaathon performed a rare combination of the physical and the spiritual in her breathtaking performance… She is an uncompromising performer of Japanese butoh dance, and her special immersion brought the audience very close to the grief, regardless of time and place. ”
Recent performances
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November 17th 2021
Ringkøbing Fjord Teater http://rfteater.dk/
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January 19th 2022
Teater Vejle https://www.vejlemusikteater.dk/program/shinpai-shinaide-dont-worry-about-us/
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