Kokoro Dance closes out 2023 with a Jazz Jam, December 29
Live improvised music accompanies the butoh company’s dancers
Kokoro Dance.
Kokoro Dance presents Jazz Jam on December 29 at 8 pm at KW Production Studio
KOKORO DANCE IS bringing 2023 to a joy-filled close as it hosts its final Jazz Jam of the year on December 29.
It’s part of an ongoing series of interdisciplinary collaborations in which the butoh company dancers are accompanied live by local improvising jazz musicians.
“Our Kokoro Jazz Jams give us opportunities to express ourselves in the moment with the fantastic stimulus of improvising jazz musicians of the highest caliber,” Kokoro Dance cofounders Jay Hirabayashi and Barbara Bourget say in an artist’s statement. “We never know what they are going to play or what our responses will be. We know that it is always a conversation—a call from them and a response from us that is also a call back to them. It is harmony and dissonance colliding and colluding in both music and dance. It is exciting and adrenalin-producing enjoyment for us, the musicians, and our audiences.”
Joining Bourget and Hirabayashi are dancers Salome Nieto and Allison Lang, among others from the company.
Accompanying the dancers is a group of returning jazz musicians: Russell Sholberg on bass, Daniel Miles Kane on saxophone, and Tony Wilson on guitar. New for this latest Jazz Jam edition is Kevin Romain, who will be playing drums and vintage cymbals.
Doors open at 7:30 pm in the KW Production Studio, located in the historic Woodward’s Building at 111 West Hastings Street. Drinks will be available by donation.
Tickets to see Jazz Jam can be purchased online for $20 apiece, or pay what you can.
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