The Rite of Spring

Min Tanaka, whose troupe is called MaiJuku, is a distinctive personality in Japanese alternative theatre. Theatre in which issues like the mind, the body and language are investigated. The Rite of Spring came into being on a farm in the village of Hakushu, Min Tanaka’s home. Every year, young people from all over the world travel there to participate in his summer workshop. Min: ‘People from all over the world dance with me and they are entirely different from each other. Not only physically, but also their unique stories. They are a sort of history of the body. I expect each dancer to draw the theme from himself, from his personal experience. Each of us is standing at the end of a very long line of development that leads us back to our childhood, our parents, right back to our animal essence.’ Min Tanaka also addresses people who know nothing about Japan and Japanese art. Maybe it’s because on their road to discovery, Min and his dancers try to get deep into the roots of the cultures of all people, when there were no Europeans, nor Japanese.