On Tuesday, 25 June 2019, we held the 20th Creative Café on the 3rd floor of Yamagata Manabikan.

The theme was “Experience Contemporary Dance, Boost Creativity!“.

It is a workshop for all citizens to provide an opportunity to experience contemporary dance, inviting the facilitator, Ms. KATO Yumi. Contemporary dance is a style of expressive dance that is not strained to specific dance genres. Ms. KATO says, “anyone can be a contemporary dancer, showing their creativity and their minds through physical moves.” 

Yamagata City has been planning to renovate “Yamagata Manabikan” as a hub for the Yamagata City of Film. It is a collaborative event of our new center and the Creative Café. The 3rd floor is usually not opened for the public, so it is a special occasion for the citizens to enter the unique place of the Yamagata Manabikan.

The 3rd floor of Yamagata Manabikan ©︎2019 MAN-CREATE

Furthermore, as a UNESCO Creative City of Film, we set a goal to film the dance and disseminate contemporary dance, Creative Café, and our new hub to the world through the power of film.

The theme of the dance was “Color of Yamagata“.

It was inspired by the drone movie “GEOGRAFITTI YAMAGATA” shot by Mr. SATO Naoki, an art director, graphic designer, photographer, and drone grapher. He designed the pamphlets, a calendar, and an advertising board of Yamagata City of Film. By using the drone movie, dancers could dance in the beautiful scenery of Yamagata.

The first screening of the drone movie to share the dance theme ©︎2019 MAN-CREATE

During the workshop, 13 dancers were divided into four groups because the drone movie was composed of four parts. They talked and danced to share their feelings and to express their creativity into physical moves.

Workshop ©︎2019 MAN-CREATE

We made two films during the event.

For the first film,  we screened the movie on the wall of the room, and four teams took turns to express the colors of Yamagata by contemporary dance.

The first film [作品①] ©︎2019 MAN-CREATE

For the second film, we screened the movie in the hall so that it looked like a projection mapping. We picked a part from the movie, and 13 dancers freely expressed their minds inspired by the movie.

The hall turning into a huge snow mountain. ©︎2019 MAN-CREATE

The second film [作品②] ©︎2019 MAN-CREATE

Looking back the event, the facilitator, Ms. KATO Yumi, writes;

“Thank you for holding the workshop and letting me be the facilitator for this event. The workshop was volumunous that it could be divided into three two-hour workshops. However, because of all the efforts the dancers and staffs made, we could succeed the event. I wish I could spend more time to boost their creativity one by one, but it was still the wonderful dance workshop in collaboration with beautiful drone movie of Yamagata and unique space of Yamagata Manabikan. Thank you all for precious moment.”

(KATO Yumi, the facilitator of the 20th Creative Café “Experience Contemporary Dance, Boost Creativity!”) 

Also, the dancers gave us some comments about how they felt about the event.

The 3rd floor was magical that I was totally into the place, especially at the time of sunset. Further, when the drone movie was screened, it became a different world. It was unusual to dance in the atmosphere.

It was an exciting experience to think about my physical movements along with the music and film and see myself dancing in a silhouette.

It was fun to cooperate with team members to make a dance and also dance all together in the hall. It was a refreshing moment for me to dance and make ad-libs with someone that I first met. 

I was bewildered to try contemporary dance for the first time, but I enjoyed it by taking advice from the facilitator and the members. 

Yamagata Manabikan was built on 7 July 1927. The combination of old exposed concrete space and the beautiful scenery of Yamagata was phenomenal. Even though it was a minimal time, we made conversations through vocal and physical activities that we could make films altogether. I felt like this was the event of how Yamagata should aspire to present itself as a creative city. 

 

To hold this event, there was a lot of preparation because there was no precedent to hold a night event on the 3rd floor of Yamagata Manabikan and the place had no electricity.  It was almost miraculous that we could succeed in the event. We deeply appreciate everyone for providing support to this event.

Those two films will be first screened at the next Creative Café “YAMAGATA Drone Movie Contest” on Tuesday, 9 July 2019, inviting Mr. SATO Naoki, the drone grapher and the winner of the 2018 contest. After the event, we will upload them to our official Youtube. 

Thank you, everyone!

Please contact us for further details.

Next Creative Café…