Performance of the solo dance work Moonrise, choreographed and performed by Japanese dancer Yasushi Kurotaki
At CROSSROADS 2026, Japanese dancer and choreographer Yasushi Kurotaki will perform in Poland for the first time. In 2023, he won the Grand Prize in a Japanese solo choreography competition in Tokyo for Double Poem.
The artist has studied, among others, with the outstanding Japanese dancer and choreographer Saburo Teshigawara. Kurotaki’s works are distinguished by extraordinary mastery of the body and a powerful spiritual dimension.
Moonrise will premiere in September 2026 at an international dance festival in Montreal.
The performance occupies the territory between contemporary dance and physical-expression theatre. The work is inspired by Obasute, a Nō theatre play in which a daughter-in-law persuades her husband to abandon his elderly mother. Kurotaki finds a similar lack of imagination and willingness to understand another person in the public shaving of the heads of women deemed traitors in France after World War II. The artist asks: Are we capable of understanding and empathising with the motives that guide another person? Perhaps imagination and the capacity for empathy could prevent many acts of cruelty toward others.
After the performance, there will be a screening of a film recording of Kurotaki’s dance solo Double Poem, followed by the artist’s meeting with the audience (Ujazdowski Castle CCA Cinema).
The film screening is presented courtesy of Yasushi Kurotaki.
