MatchAtria – e x t e n d e d 

Prepare a delicious cup of tea … and give those, who share your company, your whole heart. Sen no Rikyu (1522-1591, Japanese tea-master)

いらっしゃいませ!  Welcome! 

MatchAtria is a multimedia dance installation, which invites the audience into a unique and intimate contact with the heart. The title combines ‘matcha’, tea, which is served during the Japanese tea ceremony, and ‘atria’, the anatomical term for the auricle, the heart’s atrium.

In collaboration with the internationally renowned Kyoto-based visual artist and film director Yoshimasa Ishibashi, the Japanese dancer Yui Kawaguchi has designed a ‘heart-ceremony’ that welcomes its visitors „heartily“, in every sense of the word.

The disciplined body of the dancer meets 3D video projections, sound and voice landscapes. Moreover a specially developed tool, the ‘Heartbeat Unit’ emits the vibrations of Kawaguchis heartbeat live, so that the audience is physically connected to her. Seeing, hearing, and touching, we experience the vibrant worlds contained in our bodies.

Through this ‘Tea-ceremony’, as the most direct form of hospitality, ancient wisdom is brought to fulfillment. According to Goethe: ‘It must come from the heart, what should touch the heart.’.

She handed out a life-size silicone hearts to each one in the audience, let it really throb and danced within her own 3-D projected body. It was crazy. But with these Japanese, madness has method in it.

A. Wesemann, editor-in-chief at the magazine “Tanz” 

Forthcoming dates:

10th & 11th October 2015

TEART International Theater Forum Minsk, Belarus

20th & 21st October 2015

GLOBALIZE:COLOGNE 2015, Germany 

23th & 24th October 2015

FFT Düsseldorf, Germany 

17th November 2015

ZKM Karlsruhe Medientheater, Germany

20th & 21st November 2015

Festival Internacional Madrid en Danza, Spain 

A production by Yui Kawaguchi and Yoshimasa Ishibashi.

Coproduced by Sophiensaele, Blueproject Barcelona, FFT Düsseldorf and Ma scène nationale – Pays de Montbéliard. Funded by the Berlin Senate – Cultural Affairs. Supported by Sennheiser, Beamaround and Dock11 Berlin. In co-operation with Nico and the Navigators.