Passion, pain, and joy fuelled the evolution of Kokoro Dance
Co-founders Barbara Bourget and Jay Hirabayashi have always liked to challenge themselves—and their audiences
Kokoro Dance, The Believer, 1995. Photo by Laurence M. Svirchev
When Barbara Bourget and Jay Hirabayashi founded Kokoro Dance in 1986, no one in Canada had seen anything like it: a striking form inspired by butoh and Western ballet-based forms of expression. A fierce passion to their art helped the duo navigate the organization’s trying first decade. From there, a through line emerged: the creation of provocative, experimental, cross-cultural works.
Kokoro makes striking performances that consider themes and beauty standards through its own lens-philosophy, challenging audiences to find a humanity they themselves can relate to.
During the early years, Kokoro Dance mounted several full-length pieces, including Rage (first in 1987), Dance of the Dead (1994), and X-Roads (2000). These proved to be ground-breaking examples of how the company is stylistically distinct with its affinity for Western and Asian modes of movement and music.
Butoh, which emerged in the 1950s, was influenced by Artaud and Dadaism, but also by a desire to create a pure, non-Western Japanese art form—one that was not dictated by learning specific steps or choreographic combinations.
Rage, which was the first piece in which Kokoro explored butoh, told the story of Hirabayashi's Japanese American father, who was imprisoned for two years during the Second World War for the “crime” of being of Japanese ancestry. It was revisited (1988, 1992), each performance unique. Rage was ultimately transformed into The Believer (1995) when Hirabayashi came to the realization that “rage” was more his feeling, and not that of the first (issei) and second (nisei) generation Japanese Canadians and Americans who were interned and imprisoned. “As a third (sansei) generation member of the community, I have to acknowledge that the emotional intent of this work are more my feelings,” he says. Many issei and nisei felt a sense of shame that Canada and the U.S. considered them enemies even though the majority were naturalized citizens.
Bourget describes Kokoro’s art as a synthesis of everything they have experienced. “Almost everything I feel is communicated when I dance,” Bourget says. “Dance is ephemeral, but it should connect to a place that we can’t describe in words. It should touch that visceral centre—that place that is what it means to be human.”
Barbara Bourget, Dance of the Dead, 1994. Photo by Laurence M. Svirchev
Dance of the Dead brought even more fiery life to Kokoro Dance, blending Spanish flamenco with butoh’s dark, sombre images. The result was a life-affirming work of depth and passion. “Both butoh and flamenco are improvisational in terms of making you go inside yourself to find out what you want to say,” Bourget says. “Both are about love, death, and sex.”
The 2000-piece X-Roads was an illustration of Kokoro’s push to evolve rather than run the risk of regurgitating without innovation. While they had committed to learn butoh from students of Tatsumi Hijikata, after his 1986 passing, and directly from Kazuo Ohno, the other primary butoh pioneer, they felt the need to broaden their boundaries. It was a similar sentiment when it came to the option of pursuing the Western side of their dance backgrounds, modern movement and ballet; to move forward, they needed to carve out their own approach.
In that pursuit, they reached the crossroad that formed the basis of X-Roads. In the ensemble piece for 13 dancers set to a score by long-time Kokoro collaborator Robert Rosen, Hirabayashi and Bourget encompassed a meeting of the two dance styles, an entirely new way of moving that they say, “has both respect and disrespect for both genres.”
“That is what X-Roads is about,” Hirabayashi says. “It is also a metaphor for Vancouver. We come from all parts of the world to this city. We keep some of our traditional cultural values. Sometimes we fossilize those values in fact. We adapt as well, of course… We are suggesting a direction that redefines Canadian culture.”
Kokoro Dance, X-Roads, 2000. Photo by Man-Kit Kwan