Jija Sohn
GEISHA’S MIRACLE
SAT 13 May — 7.30 pm Konvikt / K3
SUN 14 May — 3.30 pm Konvikt / K3
concept and choreography Jija Sohn
co-creation Yurie Umamoto, Yui Nakagami
dramaturgy Charlot van der Meer
artistic advice Suzy Blok, Heleen Volman, Kristin de Groot, Katerina Bakatsaki
light design Vinny Jones
sound design Sne Martin Snider
costumes Rosemarie Allaert
production Sanne Wichman
publicity Lisette Brouwer, Ruth Verraes
premiere 30 June 2016
performed by
Jija Sohn, Yurie Umamoto, Yui Nakagami
The production Geisha's Miracle is a cleverly conceived exploration of
femininity and womanhood. It plays with tradition that embraces the
modern age with complete commitment. Three Asian dancers invite you
for an equally absurd as rational game. Their exotic world looks somehow
familiar. Behind the masks of these performers we find hidden jokes and
flashing emotions. The visual and musical landscape invites the audience
to immerse themselves in their seemingly absurd and detailed world.
With the use of dance and movement, Jija Sohn, born in Japan, is
looking for the common denominator between all ethnic-cultural differences
of people. Her production is a synthetic physical experience.
The miracle of this geisha is that she, in a spectacular way and in the end
fully committed rocking and rapping, breaks out from her stylized and
with tradition surrounded role, but despite all this keeps her dignity.
Wendy Lubberding, Theaterkrant.nl, 1 July 2016
The Korean/Japanese choreographer and dancer Jija Sohn (1982) grew
up in Kyoto where she also graduated from Cultural Studies. Then she
continued at Purdue University, USA with studies of Applied Linguistics
but she decided to completely change her field of work to performing
arts. In 2015 she graduated from the Amsterdam School of the Arts. She
manages to apply her knowledge from the cultural studies innovatively to
her dance work. She aims to turn her experience as a kyabajō (a flirtatious
hostess who pours drinks and has intelligent conversations with male clients
in a kyabakura bar) in a production called Kyabajo later in 2017.
She has worked as a performer in productions of renowned choreographers
such as Ivo Dimchev’s X-on, matanicola’s bodySLANGuage
and Fernando Belfiore’s D3US/X\M4CHIN4.
In her work, Jija Sohn is interested in the moment at which different
realities violently collide. She investigates how cultural diversity can be
transformed into a universal value and bases her work on the heart of
human experience.