Sumiko Haneda returns to film what will be the final bits of Akiko Kanda's life, documenting Kanda's will to dance as she struggles with terminal cancer.
This musical play is based on the first act of Goethe's Faust. The angel Mephistopheles is condemned to fall from heaven after committing a sin. He is told that he can only return to heaven if he can bring a human being on the path of salvation. Mephistopheles refuses, believing that man is...
Night Journey, the dance, had its premiere only two and a half years after Appalachian Spring, and it is a close cousin. It too has a stream-of-consciousness narration: Jocasta, as she is about to kill herself, remembering what has happened to her. It too contains soul-delving solos, broken up by...
“I have three tasks in my life: to dance, to teach dance, and to create dance,” says the pioneering Japanese performer Akiko Kanda in this intimate portrait of creativity and individuality, After seeing a Martha Graham performance in college, Kanda left her family behind in Japan and arrived...
