Tamanegi

While her father was battling illness, Ikue Nakagawa drew a tamanegi onion, a pungent, sweet variety: a symbol of family relationships from its heart, surrounded by a multitude of protective layers. Amid five human-sized puppets with frozen faces, the Japanese choreographer takes on the role of daughter, sister, mother and wife. Her movements alone activate the inert figures, which she moves and watches over, as much as she cares for and comforts. Through a skilful interplay of light focal points, silent narrative scenes emerge, revealing family dynamics placed under the yardstick of the "family". mimamoru (見守る). This Japanese term is made up of two kanji: miru (見る) meaning to look, and mamoru (守る) to protect. A kind of comforting attention that we feel rather than observe. It gives each of us a protective presence, a strength that anchors us in a history populated by ancestors, hazards and benevolence. Amidst the puppets representing her loved ones, Ikue dances what we don't see, what binds us together and constitutes us. She reveals the strata of family dynamics, where the older ones surround the younger ones, before the roles are reversed with advancing age. With delicacy, she sketches the intertwined trajectories of each individual, the absences and sorrows, the traces that anchor us and that we will pass on when our turn comes.

Born in Japan, Ikue Nakagawa trained at the Centre de développement Chorégraphique national Toulouse-Occitanie. She has worked as a dancer in numerous creations by Frank Micheletti's Cie Kubilai Khan Investigations (Archipelago, Tiger Tiger Burning Bright...), but also in the theater, under the direction of Pascal Rambert (To Lose, Toute la vie, Avant que tu reviennes...). Her assiduous use of drawing is the starting point for each of her own pieces, for which she designs the scenography based on personal series. It is her gateway to her inner worlds, helping her to cut through the layers of the mille-feuilles of which she is composed, but also to free herself from the limits of the represented or danced bodies.

" The familiarity of the attitudes translates with infinite finesse the beauty and fragility of connection, care and grief [...]. A work as much plastic as choreographic, restrained and generous. "
La Libre, Marie Baudet, 03/2022

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