Co. Ruri Mito

"MeMe" is Ruri Mito's second group piece. There is a spirit of Mito’s solo piece, and she transmitted her qualities and attitude to her dancers selected at the audition, just like the title “MeMe” comes from the word “meme.” Mito created this sensitive and complex piece like weaving cloth using various colors of threads or like taking time to complete a puzzle piece. The beginning of this project was Ruri Mito's offer to Mr. Masafumi Gotoh, who is the lead vocalist of a Japanese rock band ASIAN KUN-FU GENERATION, to create music for a piece. Mito's order for Gotoh's music was to create sounds don’t disturb dancers' rhythm accumulated in their body or dominate their emotions. In Mito's works, everything starts from a body. At the same time, the music should exist as same as the body. Just like the same cells. Bodies, music, time, these elements come together and “MeMe” invites the audience to a journey to go to individual places, which vary in temperature, a flow of time, etc. It’s all up to each person. Audience can travel through own body, memories, and/or future. This piece tickles feelings of audience and brings an extraordinary sensations.

Who are you? A current of time connecting you and me.
Twisting, tangling, untwisting, gathering...

This piece was created for a festival with a theme of Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake.
Mito combined the music with her images inspired by "The Lake," a novel by Yasunari Kawabata.

‘Matou’ is a unique concept in Japan.
It has direct meanings like “to wear, put on, tangle, roll up,” and it is often used figuratively. I put on my body. I can not see all of my body for a lifetime. Tissues make up my body are kept being renewed, and they will vanish someday. The body without contents will not remain, and where the contents without the body go? Will they keep remaining? Like Snakes and cicadas, most parts of their outer layer of the skin slough off at once and become new.
Although what is left is not a dead body, it still has a perfect shape of the animal and it has no life. Is it an evidence of its life? Is there an evidence of my life?