Gold Performing Arts, Stage, Style and Scenery Design · 2020
Kasane no Irome - Piling up Colors Installation Design
- A' Design Award 2020 Gold Winner in Performing Arts, Stage, Style and Scenery Design
- Awarded April 15, 2020
- CLIENT: Egiku Japanese-Dance Products
- Estimated Number of Design Views: 91,482
- Verification code E67456104C · Verify this award
About Kasane no Irome - Piling up Colors Installation Design
An installation design of Japanese Dance. Japanese have been piling up colors from olden times to express sacred things. Also, piling up the paper with square silhouettes has been used as a thing representing sacred depth. Nakamura Kazunobu designed a space that changes the atmosphere by changing to various colors with such square "piling up" as a motif. Panels flying in the air centering on the dancers cover the sky above the stage space and depict the appearance of light passing through the space that can not be seen without the panels. A space that draws light strikingly, develops Japanese Dance.
Within the constellation of contemporary performance installation, Nakamura Kazunobu's Kasane no Irome - Piling up Colors emerges as a luminous meditation on the intersection of traditional textile aesthetics and theatrical spatial practice, drawing its conceptual foundation from the centuries-old practice of layering colors in classical garment construction while translating this principle into architectural scale. The work demonstrates extraordinary sensitivity to the phenomenology of theatrical space, employing translucent mesh panels that function simultaneously as sculptural objects, light modulators, and metaphorical veils between worlds visible and invisible. The designer appears to engage with notions of materiality and immateriality, creating forms that possess definite geometric boundaries yet seem to dissolve at their edges, hovering between presence and absence in a manner that evokes both the transience celebrated in traditional aesthetics and the suspension of ordinary time characteristic of profound theatrical moments. Technical achievement manifests particularly in the precise calibration of panel angles and positions, each element contributing to a carefully orchestrated visual symphony that reads as both random scatter and deliberate composition. The inclusion of the kimono-clad performer transforms the installation from static sculpture into living tableau, the human figure providing scale, emotional resonance, and cultural anchor that grounds the abstract geometric field in embodied tradition. The restricted palette, predominantly achromatic with subtle chromatic accents in the costume, suggests influence from ink painting traditions while simultaneously evoking contemporary minimalist sensibilities, creating a temporal ambiguity that places the work outside specific historical moment. One might observe how the falling, floating quality of the panels evokes natural phenomena, perhaps autumn leaves or scattered papers caught in stillness, inviting contemplation of impermanence and the beauty found in transitional states. What memories or sensations does this interplay of transparency and solidity awaken in the viewer's own experience of threshold moments?
Press Kit
- Unique Properties
- One Japanese Dance of Japanese traditional arts.
For a long time this dance, which has been preserved and emphasizes silence rather than dynamism, has long been out of touch with the modern atmosphere.
We grope for new Japanese dance, and this is a design of the stage art which aimed at the ideal form of Contemporary Japanese dance.
Unlike traditional Japanese dance two-dimensional stage art, three-dimensional design that takes advantage of the entire stage space.
We aimed to produce a worldview of new Japanese Dance of modern interpretation by those.
Panels flying in the air centering on the dancers cover the sky above the stage space and depict the appearance of light passing through the space that can not be seen without the panels.
Panels that correspond to light.
A space that draws light strikingly, in concert with Dancer, develops Japanese Dance.
We created a contemporary Japanese Dance of a mysterious world. - Dimensions & Packaging
- 158㎡
- Production Technology
- Three-dimensional stage design using the whole stage space.
With 3D modeling technology, the panels floating in the air were placed around the dancers as if they were blown up by the wind.
Although the panels overlap intricately, the plurality of strings that hang each panel are calculated so as not to cross each other.
We also calculated the movements of the dancers and adjusted the position of the panels to avoid the dancers.
The panel was made of a frame made of a thin 9 mm square steel square pipe and a mesh of ultra thin transparent threads made of resin in a double layer.
We made the panels so that the mesh was not homogeneous, and made the transmission slightly different, creating a subtle difference in the way light is reflected within a single panel.
This allows the panel to receive a moderate amount of light, and the panel will appear and disappear.
We were able to realize three-dimensional stage art design closely linked to the dancers, resonating with the light. - Design Challenge
- We experimented a number of times to create a panel that would receive just the right amount of light and disappear just the right amount.
We also tried many times to create a more beautiful arrangement of the panels so that they would not interfere with the dancers' movements.
The result of such an experiment was realized in this installation.
It was very difficult for me to propose this design to the people of Japanese dance, who have different values, and to get them to accept it.
This installation design was an opportunity for Japanese dance to make a leap from the traditional performing arts of an island nation that has no connection with the world to one of the world's dance genres. - Project Duration
- 12/Jun/2019 open Sakuragaokacho,Shibuya-ku,Tokyo Japan
- Operation Flow
- Japanese have been piling up colors from olden times to express sacred thing.
Also, piling up paper with square silhouettes has been used as a thing representing sacred depth.
I designed a space that changes the atmosphere by changing to various colors with such square "piling up" as a motif.
Panels flying in the air centering on the dancers cover the sky above the stage space and depict the appearance of light passing through the space that can not be seen without the panels.
A space that draws light strikingly, develops Japanese Dance. - Research
- Originally, Japanese dance aspired to an abstract and simple expression, stripped of its superfluous elements.
That idea must be evolved and sublimated into a modern expression that fits the times.
Integration with digital technology.
It's not a collaboration with soft digital, such as media art.
By utilizing digital technology in the design of the hardware part of the stage space, we drew out the new appeal of Japanese dance.
The dancers' movements and associated forms were made possible for the first time by invisible digital technology.
Digital technology is expanding the potential for expression that was originally inherent in the traditional arts of Japanese dance.
This stage was taken away as an article in the mass media such as newspapers.
The stage was estimated worldwide, and the World Dance Festival "Festival d'Avignon 2019” also perform in the festival.
It's expected also to do a dance performance in "Festival d' Avignon 2020 " this year. - Inspiration
- Japanese have been piling up colors from olden times to express nature and feelings.
In traditional Japanese women's costumes, they have shown layers of cloth of various colors, and by showing the overlap, they have expressed sacred depth.
Also, in Japan, layering paper or cloth with square silhouettes has been used as a thing representing sacred depth.
A row of square paper decorated at the entrance of a Japanese shrine is one such example.
In this work of dancing a woman's life, I designed a space that changes the atmosphere by changing to various colors with such rectangular "overlap" as a motif.
It looks like a fog. It can be seen at one time, not seen at one time, transformed into various forms.
It, together with the tone of the mysterious Koto, represents a magnificent life full of change in a woman. - Image Credits
- Photograph : Atsushi Ishida
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