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Denise Fujiwara |
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Denise Fujiwara is a choreographer, dancer, actor, dance impresario and teacher with over 28 years of professional experience. She began her interesting career in childhood, as a gymnast, when she competed internationally for the Canadian Modern Gymnastics team. |
Upon completing an Honours B.F.A. in Dance at York University, she became one of the founders of T.I.D.E. (Toronto Independent Dance Enterprise) the now-defunct but still notorious company that danced across Canada for 10 years. |
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In 1991 she formed her own company, Fujiwara Dance Inventions, to house the development of her exquisite solo concerts. Sumida River, a haunting Butoh work created especially for her by acclaimed choreographer, Natsu Nakajima, has been featured in dance festivals across Canada and in Seattle, Washington DC, Copenhagen, Ecuador and India. It was named the Best Dance Performance of 2000 by Toronto NOW Magazine. Elle Laments, her fourth concert of site-specific solo dances, was a highlight of Festivals across Canada including the Canada Dance Festival in 1998/99. Her 5th solo concert, Brief Incarnations, featured works by the remarkable choreographers Peter Chin and Tedd Robinson, as well as her own work. It received two Dora Award nominations. Komachi, by Tokyo Butoh luminary, Yukio Waguri, has toured to Ecuador and Vancouver. She returned to ensemble choreography with Conference of the Birds, which was called “ – the best thing to premiere at the (fFIDA) festival in many a year” by the Toronto Star.
In addition to her career as a dance artist, Ms. Fujiwara works in film and television. Walls, a CBC Television documentary about her life and work by celebrated filmmaker Jeremy Podeswa, won the 1995 Gemini Award for Best Performing Arts Program. In 1997 she co-founded the CanAsian Dance Festival where she is the Artistic Director.
Fujiwara’s approaches to the disciplines of dance technique, improvisation, performance and choreography have developed over 29 years of intensive research, practice and performance. She is grateful to her remarkable mentors and teachers including Tokyo Butoh master Natsu Nakajima, Montreal dance master Elizabeth Langley, the now disbanded Mangrove Dance Collective of San Francisco, American theatre director Anne Bogart, and the late choreographer Judy Jarvis. |
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PHOTOS |
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REPERTOIRE |
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NO EXIT
A new and long-awaited work, No Exit is a dance inspired by Jean Paul Sartre’s play in which three strangers arrive in Hell. With pathology, pathos and whimsy, they exemplify Sartre’s proposition, “Hell is other people”. Commissioned by DanceWorks, Toronto.
KOMACHI
Komachi is a dance inspired by a number of famous Noh plays written about the legendary Japanese poet, Ono no Komachi. She was a gifted poet and a beautiful woman but her cruelty to her many suitors was legendary. It is said that in her old age she lived her latter years as a hermit on a mountain, quite mad but with spells of brilliant lucidity. This dance is an imagistic invention of Komachi. In her old age, long after her beauty has faded, she dreams the memories of a decadent youth and is haunted by the ghosts of her past cruelties."
The choreographer, Yukio Waguri, audaciously created Komachi as a solo for Fujiwara. Mr. Waguri is an acclaimed Butoh artist based in Tokyo. He was a principle dancer in Asbestos-kan, the company of Butoh founder, Tatsumi Hijikata, before striking out on his own as a sought after choreographer, dancer and teacher. Waguri draws from Hijikata’s poetic methodology in creating this dance.
SUMIDA RIVER
Sumida River is the haunting tale of a woman in search of her stolen child. Fujiwara’s delicately shaded performance of this Butoh work explores a mother’s deeply moving journey.”Internationally acclaimed Butoh choreographer Natsu Nakajima has created this spellbinding solo interpretation of the renowned 15th century Japanese noh play especially for the remarkable Canadian performer, Denise Fujiwara.
CONFERENCE OF THE BIRDS
Conference of the Birds is inspired by the ancient Sufi epic poem by Farid Ud-Din Attar. Birds come from far and wide to discuss a proposed journey to seek
enlightenment – a journey purported to be long and unimaginably difficult. The birds immediately give reasons why each is unsuitable or unable to go, but finally they muster the courage to embark; and so begins their journey and the dance…
www.fujiwaradance.com |
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