“Borrowed Landscape-Yokohama #2” - twitter excerpts. Original link: http://togetter.com/li/362586
 

• At first being drawn by the feeling of peeping into a “town”, in the end having the sense of melting into the “town” itself.
• Because it was so great, and because I wanted so much to sense that atmosphere again, I went back after four hours, and saw it once more, pretending I happened to be there just by chance.
• The layer of soundscape put upon the elegant office building made the people’s bodies and the town’s memories stand up. Contemporary dance and modern drama goes so far. Of all the Modern Dance-stuff I have seen so far, this was the most gentle and sad. I’m left in a daze after it’s over.
• Slightly different from passively watching a drama, or taking in an installation, rather a feeling of suddenly having someone come in and direct my daily life. Mysterious 25 minutes. It is as if I discover rules and patterns in the way people in my vision move, then I feel as if I am the one setting those rules. Wow, depending on how you sharpen the focus on others, the world changes accordingly. This impulse can’t be found anywhere else, and I loved the feeling of it.
• In a corner of a shopping mall, shoppers, performers and audiences mingle with no separation between them. As a help to “watch”, people in the audience are given headphones, through which sound and words can be heard. I watch in an active way. Not because it is a famous sight or something, I am just seeing what’s there, in front of my eyes.
• Just like turning the pages of a book, I read the dance. That was how the time spent felt like. Yes, this is exactly what daily life is about. It made me aware of the ordinary.
• Yokohama Borrowed Landscape, it was great. There were so many moments when I couldn’t tell who were passing by and who the cast were, and that kept me thrilled non-stop. “Long ago, this place was a sea.” An experience so intimate and precious, making me feel my ground is trembling. Before I knew it, I was pulled into the performance and had become one of the performers.
• Yokohama Borrowed Landscape, fantastic fantastic! And then 100 times that. I enjoyed to the full the freedom that I have/that I don’t have to frame the view with my own eye. I don’t want to forget this experience.
• Even after “Yokohama Borrowed Landscape” I can’t help but looking at the town around me with the feeling the performance is still carrying on. An upgrade of the senses, or a software installation that drastically increases the pixels of daily life.
• If theatre was a novel or a story, this is a poem. I loved it so much.
• A feeling of sharing a place with the people next to me, who live in a world different from mine, keeping a comfortable distance. I want to see 3 as well.
• Yokohama Borrowed landscape, I loved it. A strange atmosphere. A beauty - not danced, not made.
• At first I was only grinning. Slowly the text and the view in front of me and the people and even the rays of the sun came pressing towards my heart. Yokohama Borrowed Landscape, so difficult to separate from Yokohama.
• Went to see “Yokohama Borrowed Landscape”. Participated. Experienced it. The sensory awareness opens up as you put on the headphones; the world around you becomes different. It was so dramatic and intense; tears welled up in my eyes. Repeatedly, just because people are here and I am here.
• A re-encounter with Yokohama Borrowed Landscape after a year. The gaze of those of us watching stop, and feels different from those passing by with their tilted head. Their disinterest is so comfortable, I love it. If you just change your point of view, then even the spectator becomes a part of the landscape surrounding the performer. Maybe we too, were acting the roles we had been delegated.
• I liked the way the ordinary passersby and the performers mingled and kept changing the landscape, but above that, the sound brought with it a sharpened focus and a private connection with the performance, and the moment my mind and senses were torn open, that was astonishing. And what a fresh and original way to finish by throwing the sound out in the real surroundings and leaving it there.
• No matter whether you are accustomed to site-specific works or new to it, this one has originality and high quality that can be enjoyed by all and everyone. It gives comfortable impulses that cool down your brain.
• The last time was excellent, and I also really enjoyed this time. (…) First and foremost, the success of this production lies with Heine Avdal and Yukiko Shinozaki who developed the concept, directed and performed themselves. It is not about placing the extra-ordinary into the ordinary landscape, but their seamless ingenuity in making the ordinary life melt and come forward. (Atsushi Sasaki/Critique)
• So different from seeing installation arts or interactive art in art galleries. In this work, because of the openness of the space and because it is an environment bordering daily life, and because I could decide for myself where I wanted to stand and what I wanted to look at, it was as if the message seeped directly into me and that was great.
• I loved Yokohama Borrowed Landscape. I notice that I see the town with a sharper and clearer mind now.
• “Yokohama Borrowed Landscape” truly awesome. What’s true and what’s imaginary woven together without missing a seam. True documentary! (…) I guess these types of projects have been around before as well, but this one was so refined, so comfortable. (Kazuhiro Soda/film director)

 
Translated from Japanese by Anne Lande Peters