LSD
“Suddenly, we are old. Like Kazuo Ishiguro’s Beatrice and Axl in The Buried Giant we wait anxiously for a boatman to take us to the island of eternity.” - Barbara Bourget, Jay Hirabayashi (2024)
Kokoro Dance presents LSD, is a new monumental work designed to be performed in-the-round in studio or stage settings that have surround sound capabilities and programmable LED lighting systems, LSD incorporates music by Kokoro Dance’s late Musical Director, Robert J. Rosen (1956-2018), costumes, set pieces, and set design by UK artist Jonathan Baldock, lighting design by Gerald King, and butoh-infused choreography by Kokoro Dance Artistic Directors Barbara Bourget and Jay Hirabayashi. Joining Barbara and Jay in performance are Salomé Nieto and Allison Lang.
We began working with lighting designer Gerald King in 1985 while performing for Touchstone Theatre in a Peter Eliot Weiss play called Going Down for the Count, a fantasy on the theme of Dracula dealing with the themes of gender sexuality and society. Gerald loved the way his lights reflected on our white-painted bodies and offered his lighting services to us for any of our future productions. We took him up on his offer and he has lit all our major productions in Vancouver, across Canada, in Poland, Lithuania, Germany, and Argentina. Gerald is a painter and the stage, and our bodies are his canvas.
We met UK artist Jonathan Baldock in 2014 on a blind date at the Apartment Gallery on Pender Street when we were invited to improvise at an exhibition of his work by the curator, Tobin Gibson. He wrote the following about that encounter:
“For my current exhibition at the Apartment Gallery in Vancouver I wanted to activate some of the works on display. To push the potential for a performance to imbue the work with additional meaning – a ritualistic and bodily response to an artwork whose language is constantly shifting by what we know about it. A presence by pure association. I was lucky enough to be put in contact with Jay and Barbara of Kokoro Dance who had agreed to work with me on this one-off project during my visit to Vancouver, Canada. They created a fantastic, improvised performance in direct response to the work that transfixed the audience on the night of the opening. The only sound was of their bodies moving – reacting to the fabric, sand and objects they touched. The gallery was completely filled with people and yet their presence during the performance created an atmosphere whereby you could hear a pin drop. The experience was so positive for me and they gave me so much to think about within my work.”
We invited Jonathan to create costumes and set pieces for our 2015 production of The Book of Love. He gave us gowns with sleeves that were twice the length of our arms and put large wicker-basket masks on our heads. In 2017, he invited us to London’s Dilston Grove Gallery to perform with his creations in an exhibition entitled THERE’S NO PLACE LIKE HOME. We have invited him back to continue our creative journey together for this LSD project.
We are joined in this project by Salomé Nieto who has danced with us for the past 30 years and Allison Lang, recently arrived from Wen Wei Wang’s Ballet Edmonton.
Barbara Bourget
Jay Hirabayashi
On stage
Barbara Bourget
Jay Hirabayashi
Salomé Nieto
Allison Lang
ComposerRobert J. Rosen
Light designGerald King
Set design and costumeJonathan Baldock
Photographer / VideographerChris Randle
Videographer / Additional PhotoJo Hirabayashi
Supported byCanada Council for the Arts, BC Arts Council, City of Vancouver, Government of BC, Japanese Canadian Heritage Legacies Fund
On stage4 dancers
On the road6-7 persons
Duration81 minutes (73 + 8-minute prologue)
Stage requirementsMinimum height | 3.5 m
Minimum width | 10 m
Minimum depth | 10 m
PremieredKW Studios Vancouver Canada 2024
Created with the additional generous support of: