ROBOT, ETERNAL LOVE

After dancing with her father, then with her partner, and giving birth to a baby boy, Kaori Ito finds herself confronted with her life as an artist in perpetual motion, and with the very contemporary sensation that time is accelerating. Frequently on tour all over the world, her almost robotic lifestyle makes it impossible for her to put down roots, and gives her the impression of having no time for rest or emptiness. Despite this seemingly routine-free life, there's always time for doubt and banality. There are encounters, both intense and brief, and the fear of loneliness. The logbook, which records his life's activities in 1-hour to 5-minute increments and was used to compose the score for the spoken texts, exposes all this. Putting herself in the shoes of a robot who has everything to learn from human behavior in order to come to life allows her to step back from humanity, to live in the present moment, to be alive on stage. At last, she finds herself alone to accept death, so close to birth, and to learn to love the essence of human beings, their fragility. Sometimes prostheses that multiply this body, sometimes remains that disperse it, the casts of her body parts that accompany the play represent all the transformations of a life.

Dancer and designer for 20 years, Kaori Ito seeks to bring out a vital movement that connects bodies and brings into existence the void, the invisible and the sacred. Born in Japan into a family of artists, she studied classical dance from an early age, followed by modern dance in New York. A performer for over 10 years with major European companies, she felt the need to create her own company in order to develop her artistic approach and choreographic writing. She founded the Himé company in 2015. After an autobiographical trilogy, she returned to her Japanese culture, which inspired her to create, in 2020, the first piece in which she is not on stage. Convinced of the need to make children's voices heard and to give their creativity a place, in 2021 she begins creating with and for young audiences. At the crossroads of cultures and languages, currents, practices and disciplines, Kaori Ito is developing a hybrid artistic vocabulary and a creative approach based on contemporary rituals. Driven by the desire to carry forward a project that dreams the future with young people and gives it substance through art, Kaori Ito is dedicating herself to this wish in 2023 by taking over the direction of the TJP, Centre Dramatique National de Strasbourg. Her aim is to turn it into a transdisciplinary, intercultural and intergenerational theater that promotes the cross-disciplinary nature of art, the importance of children's questioning and their involvement in the creative process.