Hiroaki Umeda
Hiroaki Umeda is a choreographer and a multidisciplinary artist now recognized as one of the leading figures of the Japanese avant-garde art scene. Since the launch of his company S20, his subtle yet violent dance pieces have toured around the world to audience and critical acclaim. His work is acknowledged for the highly holistic artistic methodology with strong digital back ground, which considers not only physical elements as dance, but also optical, sonal, sensorial and, above all, spatiotemporal components as part and parcel of the choreography. Based on his profound interest in choreographing time and space, Umeda has spread his talent not only as a choreographer and dancer, but also as a composer, lighting designer, scenographer and visual artist.
Born in Tokyo, 1977, Umeda first studied photography at the Nihon University in Tokyo. At the age of 20, he gained interest in art more suitable for creating intense bodily experiences, which he is now known for, and started taking numerous dance classes such as ballet, hip-hop, modern dance and so on. After around a year, in 2000, Umeda stopped attending the lessons, founded his company, S20, and started creating his own multidisciplinary works by freely integrating all distinct dance practices and other art forms.
In 2007, his new solo piece “Accumulated Layout” premiered in the prestigious Théâtre National de Chaillot with much anticipation, which resulted in a sell-out performance and another great acclaim. Drawing further from his now signature style of mixing digital imagery, minimal soundscape and extremely potent corporeality, Umeda’s other solo works such as “Adapting for Distortion” (2009), “Haptic” (2009), “Holistic Strata” (2011) and “split flow” (2013) has transfixed the audience in major festivals and theatres worldwide.
In 2009, Umeda commenced his ten-year choreographic project “Superkinesis” and started working with dancers of distinct physical background such as contemporary dancers (1.centrifugal, 2009), hip-hop dancers (2. repulsion, 2010), classical ballet dancers (3. isolation, 2011) and Asian traditional dancers (4. temporal pattern, 2013).
GötenborgsOperans Danskompani, Sweden has commissioned Umeda’s latest choreography piece, “Interfacial Scale” (2013), created for 11 dancers and an abstract orchestral music composed by Yoshihiro Hanno. Fresh from the show’s success, his latest choreographic piece “Peripheral Stream” (2014) was premiered at Théâtre Châtelet in March 2014, commissioned by the L.A Dance Project lead by Benjamin Millepied.
Source : The company S20 ‘s website
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