Ten Nights of Dream

Photo of Colleen Lanki by Eugene Lin

Ten Nights of Dream

May 21-23, Centre A, Vancouver International Centre for Contemporary Asian Art

2 West Hastings Street

CURTAIN: 8:30pm

TICKETS: $20/$16

BOX OFFICE: TicketsTonight 604.684.2787

The uncanny world of dreams and the unconscious is brought to life in Ten Nights of Dream, TomoeArts’ multidisciplinary production featuring nihon buyoh–inspired choreography, a rich musical blending of shakuhachi and electro-acoustic sounds, and stunning projections, all based on the writing of one of Japan’s greatest novelists.

A woman buried with a piece of fallen star; a blind child riding on the back of the dreamer; a huge ship going nowhere; a panama hat; a barber; a goldfish seller; a thousand pigs. These haunting images are found in a series of extraordinary and little-known tales written by one of Japan’s greatest novelists Natsume Sôseki. In Ten Nights of Dream (May 21-23, Centre A), TomoeArts artistic director Colleen Lanki performs the characters and images from Natsume’s epic work. Lanki’s choreography is based on the forms and aesthetics of nihon buyoh (Japanese classical dance). Lanki, who studied Japanese classical dance for more than a decade, works to push the forms beyond their traditional boundaries and plays with the principles of time and space. For more: http://www.colleenlanki.com/

Ten Nights of Dream features original music by Alcvin Ramos, in which he fuses traditional Japanese instruments and electro-acoustic sounds. Ramos is a master player/teacher of the shakuhachi, a traditional Japanese bamboo flute and director of Bamboo-In Shakuhachi Centre. He heads the extraordinary world music group Dharmakasa. For more: http://www.bamboo-in.com/

Visual projections and lighting are designed by a team of senior design students from UBC, Craig Alfredson, David Kim, Yulia Shtern, and Ana Maria Espinoza Vaca, under professor Robert Gardiner, one of Canada’s foremost scenographers. Costumes and sets are designed by Yulia Shtern. Ten Nights of Dream’s director, Matthew Romantini, brings experience in dance, physical theatre and adaptation of non-theatrical sources for the stage.

TomoeArts (pronounced toh-moh-ay) is a new company that promotes, teaches and performs nihon buyoh (Japanese classical dance). It creates and presents performances incorporating the forms and aesthetics of Japanese traditional performing arts. Ten Nights of Dream is presented as part of the explorASIAN Festival celebrating Asian Heritage Month in Metro Vancouver.