Plexus

The way I intended to portray Kaori Ito mostly implied portraying her body. I’m not interested in an anatomical study, but in the memory of a body substantially shaped by dance ; I care about the innermost marks her art has carved in her living body.

Plexus comes from the late period Latin and means « intertwining ».  Later on, the ordinary sense of the term used in the context of anatomy meant « the network of nerves or blood vessels ».  The very definition of the word refers to the muscles’ inner mechanics : the impulses from the nervous system and the flow of oxygenated blood, as well as the external mechanics of dance : intertwinings of movements, driftings, bodies and body parts.  The way I intended to portray Kaori Ito mostly implied portraying her body.  I’m not interested in an anatomical study, but in the memory of a body substantially shaped by dance ;  I care about the innermost marks her art has carved in her living body.  How has her every cell taken part in this wonderful network of muscle tissue ?  How has dance shaped, sculpted, and eventually expanded or crippled her innerspace ?  Kaori Ito has worked with many different choreographers, each of them having singular, sometimes opposed, sets of aesthetics.  She has been subjected to opposite influences, she has been caught and torn between various artistic choices.  These strained have crossed her body.  The external entity of dance has entered her. Plexus deals with this dialogue between Kaori’s innerworld and the outside world. Isn’t this dialogue one of the quintessential features of the universal human experience ?  Is this dialectic the architect of our innerself ? or is it the hub of our frailties?

With this upcoming project, my wish is to continue with the series of women portraits that began in 2008 with Stephanie Fuster in Questcequetudeviens ?. Yet again, I opted for a dancer as my model : the Japanese Kaori Ito. My aim is to tackle dance as an intimate assessment of the innermost self. Once more I will rely on the work and the artistic career of the dancer ; with Kaori Ito, as it was already the case with Stéphanie Fuster, her path can be explored in the light of its various displacements. Kaori Ito was born in Japan. That’s where she became a dancer, she then pursued her training in New York, and finally arrived in Europe where she has worked with renown choreographers like Angelin Preljocaj, Philippe Decouflé, James Thierrée and Alain Platel. She settled down in Paris, and has since experimented distance from home like a long-lasting, yet chosen path, in order to carry on with her dancing career.