Tag: Japan

Meet Mami Hariyama, director of a Japanese ballet school in New York City

By Ayako Yuse

2010年からニューヨークでバレエスクール「ハリヤマバレエスクール」を主宰されている針山真実さんにインタビューしました。

We recently interviewed Mami Hariyama from Japan, who is the director of the ballet school “HARIYAMA BALLET” in New York City. The ballet school opened in 2010.

【質問】
Q:日本のどちらの出身ですか？どうしてニューヨークに来られたのですか？

Where in Japan are you from? How did you end up in New York City?

大阪府・吹田市出身です。ニューヨークに来た理由はカッコいい理由は無いんです。大きな挫折感と喪失感でとても悩んでいて、人生の再出発をしようとニューヨークを新天地に選びました。ニューヨークに来たのは2004年です。

I’m from Suita-city, Osaka. I didn’t have a great reason to come here. I was suffering very much because of the big feeling of frustration and loss and I chose New York City as a new place to restart my life. I came here in 2004.

Q:バレエスクールのSNS（ソーシャルメディア）はいつも見るのが楽しみです。バレエスクールをつくろうと思ったきっかけは何でしたか？

We love to follow your ballet school on SNS (social media). How did you get the idea for opening a ballet school?

バレエが好きだから。もっとバレエに関わりたい、自分に指導は出来るだろうか、と思いクラスを開講してみようと思ったことがハリヤマバレエのスタートのきっかけです。初めは1週間に大人クラスが1クラスだけでしたが徐々にクラスが増やし子供クラスも開講して今のスタジオに至ります。

Because I like ballet. I wanted to keep putting myself in ballet. Then I wondered if I could teach ballet and opened the ballet class. First I had only one class for adult a week, but step by step I got more students and I opened the class for kids, too.

Q:バレエの生徒さんたちととても素敵な時間をすごされていると思いますが、その中での思い出など教えてください。

You have so many wonderful experiences with the ballet kids. Please share one of your favorite moments with us.

思い出は本当に沢山あります。初めてバレエクラスを開講した日のこと。初めての発表会。それから毎年行っている数々のパフォーマンス。オリジナルバレエの制作。生徒たちの初舞台。生徒たちの成長。そして日本へ帰ってしまった生徒たちとの再会。生徒が初めてポワントを履く日。生徒を連れて初めてのコンクールへの参加。毎年のサマーインテンシブ。そして生徒たちから貰うお手紙やメッセージも一つ一つが大切な思い出。生徒が抱き着いて来たり、大好き！と言ってくれることもとても大きなパワーになります。

I have a lot of memories! The first day to open the ballet class. The first ballet recital. A lot of yearly performance. Making original ballet. The first ballet recital of my students. The growth of my students. The meeting the students, who went back to Japan. The day when my students wear toe shoes for the first time. The first participating in a contest with my students. The summer intensive of every year. Each letter and messages from my students. I get so much power, when my kids students come to hug me and tell me “I like you a lot!”.

Q:バレエダンサーにとって強さを作る上で食べることはとても大事かと思いますが、ニューヨークでの好きな食べ物や日本食レストランはありますか？

Ballet dancers need food for strength. What is your favorite food and do you have a favorite Japanese restaurant in New York City?

食べ物は何でも好きなんです。ニューヨークには私が好きな美味しいチーズケーキが沢山あります。そしてラッキーな事はニューヨークにはとにかくレストランが沢山あってあらゆる国の料理が食べられます。日本食レストランも沢山あって、最近はお寿司やラーメンもとても流行っています。タバタというラーメン屋さんに行ったときにミハイル・バリシニコフに遭遇した時は驚きました。

I love any food! There are many delicious cheese cakes, which is my favorite, in New York. And fortunately there are also a lot of restaurants and we can enjoy dishes from all countries here! These days, sushi and ramen are very popular in New York, too. When I went to the ramen restaurant “Tabata”, I ran into Mikhail Baryshnikov! I was surprised!

View this post on Instagram

Party time!!!

A post shared by Hariyama Ballet New York (@hariyama_ballet) on

Q: ニューヨークの好きな場所を３つ教えてください。

Where are your favorite three places in New York City?

1番目はアメリカン・バレエ・シアターやニューヨーク・シティ・バレエが見られるリンカーンセンター。2番目はハリヤマバレエスタジオからすぐのブライアントパーク近隣。ちょっとした憩いの場です。日本のお店も近くにあるので便利です。3番目はお天気の良い日に行きたいブルックリンブリッジとその近隣です。

First, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, where we can see American Ballet Theatre and New York City Ballet. Second, I like around Bryant Park. It’s close from HARIYAMA BALLET and a good place to rest. Also there is a useful Japanese shop. Third is Brooklyn Bridge and around that, which is good for taking a walk in sunny day.

You can see cute little ballerinas photos here!
https://www.facebook.com/Hariyamaballet/

HARIYAMA BALLET
http://www.hariyamaballet.com/

Twitter
https://twitter.com/mamihariyama

Instagram
https://instagram.com/hariyama_ballet/

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Nobuhiko Obayashi: a retrospective

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November 20–December 6, 2015

This fall, Japan Society is proud to invite Japanese filmmaker Nobuhiko Obayashi to the largest retrospective of his work ever organized in the U.S. With 10 feature films and a short ranging from 1964 to 2014, in addition to an in-depth conversation with the director covering his entire career, Nobuhiko Obayashi: A Retrospective offers a thorough (re)introduction to this endlessly innovative, singular film artist who burst into the consciousness of many American film fans with his cult hit House. This series is guest curated by Dr. Aaron Gerow, Professor of Film Studies and East Asian Languages and Literatures at Yale University.

Thanks to filmmaker/curator Denis Cordier for bringing the idea of a Nobuhiko Obayashi retrospective to Japan Society.

Tickets: $12/$9 Japan Society members, seniors & students
EXCEPT screening of HOUSE: $15/$12 Japan Society members, seniors & students

Special Offer: Purchase tickets for at least three films/events in the same transaction and receive $2 off each ticket! Offer available only at Japan Society Box Office or by telephone at (212) 715-1258. Offer not available online.

SCHEDULE HERE

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Experiments in Japanese Art and Photography, 1968-1979

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FALL EXHIBITION

FOR A NEW WORLD TO COME: EXPERIMENTS IN JAPANESE ART AND PHOTOGRAPHY, 1968-1979

October 9, 2015–January 10, 2016

In the wake of the social and political upheaval of the late 1960s, Japanese artists and photographers began crafting a new visual language for an age of uncertainty. Their embrace of camera-based experiments would alter the cultural landscape and lay the foundations for contemporary art in Japan. For a New World to Come is the first comprehensive exhibition to spotlight this radical break with the past. With some 200 works by such luminaries as Ishiuchi Miyako, Daidō Moriyama, Jirō Takamatsu*, and Shōmei Tōmatsu, the exhibition charts the stunning diversity of photographic practices during this pivotal era, from conceptual series situated squarely within global artistic currents, to visually arresting meditations on time, place, and self.

For a New World to Come was organized by The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH). It is co-presented in New York City with the Grey Art Gallery, New York University, where a portion of the show is on view from Sept. 11 to Dec. 5, 2015.

Admission:
$12; students & seniors $10, Japan Society members & children under 16 free. Admission is free to all on Friday nights, 6–9 PM.

Gallery hours:
Tuesday–Thursday, 11 AM–6 PM; Friday, 11 AM–9 PM; Saturday and Sunday, 11 AM–5 PM. Closed Mondays and major holidays.

Docent-led tours:
Starting Friday, October 9, through Sunday, January 10, 2016, docent-led walk-in tours will be conducted Tuesday–Sunday at 2:30 PM and Fridays at 2:30 and 7 PM. Japanese language tours will be conducted Friday nights at 6 PM. Tours are free with admission and are approximately one hour in duration.

Japan Society Gallery will be closed November 26 and 27, December 24, 25, and 31, and January 1.

*English Wikipedia article not available at the time of writing.

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New York opens Japanese-themed cat café

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Cats are a big phenomenon in Tokyo, and now the Japanese residents of New York City need only go to Soho to get their feline fixture.

New York City has this week welcomed Koneko, a Japanese cafe with the city’s only outdoor cat play area, or “catio.” Visitors can sip a Matcha tea or eat a Hiyayakko tofu snack whilst cosying up to ten cats that are also up for adoption.

The launch has coincided with National Cat Day on Thursday, and cat handler Jackie Luther told The Independent that the launch was good timing.

When asked about the reaction from passers-by, Ms Luther said: “It has been wonderful and joyous.”

The cafe was founded by Benjamin Kalb and the cafe plans to expand to hold at least 20 cats, over two floors. All the animals are from the Anjellicle Cats Rescue, which gets the animals via a trap and release program, neutering and spaying the cats before deciding whether to set them free or try to find new owners.

Further downtown in the East Village is Meow’s Parlour, which is fully booked for Halloween. It holds 12 cats and just opened in December last year.

Brooklyn’s first pop up cat cafe — The Cat’s Meow — was planned to close on 24 October but has announced it will be extended until late November.

A fourth cat cafe in New York, called Little Lions on Grand Street, is also about to launch.

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Spectator Choreographed by Shuji Onodera

Friday, November 13, 7:30 PM
Saturday, November 14, 7:30 PM

NORTH AMERICAN PREMIERE

This highly conceptual multimedia dance work transports audiences back and forth between a seemingly quotidian space and an outlandish world. Inspired by a series of workshops with students from a school for the deaf in Tokyo, Spectator unveils non-narrative stories of tender emotion, woven through director/choreographer Shuji Onodera’s original movement vocabulary coupled with video imagery, projected text, an intimate apartment room stage set and slapstick humor. The cast includes Naoya Oda from the celebrated butoh company Dairakudakan along with Maki Yamada and Mai Nagumo, two participants from Onodera’s initial workshops for deaf students.

Tickets: $30/$25 Japan Society members

The Friday, November 13 performance is followed by a MetLife Meet-the-Artists Reception.

http://www.japansociety.org/event/company-derashinera-spectators

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New York’s Met showing 150 newly donated Japanese art treasures

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An exhibition of 150 important Japanese artworks is being held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

It includes a statue of the Buddhist deity known as Fudo Myoo by sculptor Kaikei, who lived in the late 12th and early 13th centuries. The collection also includes a depiction of a plum tree by 18th century painter Ito Jakucho.

The works are some of the 300 or so items donated to the museum after the death of collector Mary Griggs Burke in 2012. The earliest is from the 10th century.

The exhibition was set to open Tuesday and run through next July 31.

Burke began collecting Japanese art in the 1960s, eventually acquiring about 1,000 items. It was described as the largest private collection of Japanese art outside of Japan.

Some of the pieces were exhibited in public in 1985, including at the Tokyo National Museum.

Part of the Burke collection was also donated to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts.

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Japan Society Reintroduces the Filmmaker Kon Ichikawa

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In America, Kon Ichikawa has been the least visible of the great Japanese filmmakers, despite a prolific career that continued almost to his death at 92 in 2008. Individual movies have made their mark — his shattering antiwar picture “Fires on the Plain” (1959), an unqualified masterpiece; “The Makioka Sisters” (1983), the story of a family fallen on hard times in 1930s Kyoto and a film of surpassing visual splendor; or “Tokyo Olympiad” (1965), his cool, eccentric, innovative documentary about the 1964 Olympics. But perhaps because of the versatility these titles indicate, he’s never come into focus in the United States the way Kurosawa, Ozu and even Mizoguchi have. There hasn’t been a major Ichikawa retrospective in North America since 2002.

This weekend, the Japan Society in Manhattan is offering a chance to sample a few of his less familiar films with the short series “Kon Ichikawa Restorations,”i the United States premieres of three movies in new 4K ultrahigh-definition restorations, projected in 35 millimeter. It begins on Friday night with “Conflagration” (1958) and continues Saturday with “Her Brother” (1960) and the ravishing, wonderfully strange period thriller “An Actor’s Revenge” (1963).

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Japan Society Gallery Names Yukie Kamiya Next Director

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New York’s Japan Society is expected to announce tomorrow the appointment of Yukie Kamiya as the next director of the Japan Society Gallery. Ms. Kamiya, whose speciality is in Japanese contemporary art, will begin her new role at the beloved museum, which is known for its program featuring both timely and historical exhibitions, on November 16, 2015.

Ms. Kamiya has served as the chief curator of the Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art (Hiroshima MoCA) in Japan since 2007. Prior to working at Hiroshima MoCA, she was adjunct and associate curator at the New Museum in New York from 2003 to 2006. While at the Hiroshima MoCA, she has organized major solo exhibitions for prominent artists such as Yoko Ono, Cai Guo Qiang, and Do Ho Suh. Recently, she was selected as the 2016 curator of Sights and Sounds: Global Film and Video at the Jewish Museum, a long-term series of screenings spotlighting artists from different regions of the world.

“I look forward to making the Gallery a venue for exploring visual arts which express Japan’s inherent global temperament—its links to the U.S., to its neighboring nations in Asia, as well as to Europe and Latin America,” said Ms. Kamiya in a statement. “With its unique position in New York City, Japan Society Gallery can present Japanese art—both traditional and contemporary – from a new perspective, one that considers the passing of time as a single, continuous flow of ideas.”

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