WE ARE THE HOUSE: Performance
Performance (2026)
Tomoko Mukaiyama 
What began as a nine-day salon in Kyoto in May 2025 has grown into a full performance work. During those days we gathered artists, activists, thinkers, and the local community to ask one question together: who does the house belong to? Who does the body belong to? Out of those conversations, out of the discomfort and the connection, WE ARE THE HOUSE: Performance was made.
The piece weaves music, theatre, video, text and installation into a landscape where audiences move through freely. With new compositions by Yannis Kyriakides, video collaboration with Reinier van Brummelen, performance by Just van Bommel, and Tomoko Mukaiyama at the piano, it stages the body as both personal and political ground.
At the heart of the work stands a statement as simple as it is contested: my body is mine. What seems self-evident turns out to be fragile. Laws, political decisions, and social structures can reach deep into personal freedom. It is in that tension between autonomy and control that this performance finds its urgency.
Rebecca Gomperts joined the Kyoto salon and has been part of this work from the start. She is a physician and activist, and through Women on Waves, she has spent decades finding ways to reach people who are denied access to safe abortion by travelling to where the law says no, finding the gaps, making care possible . Her presence in this project is not symbolic. She is why ‘my body is mine’ is not just a statement, it is a demand.
The words spoken by Just van Bommel, rooted in personal trauma and discomfort, move through the body, through emotions that have no name and nowhere to go. The performance does not hold these as burdens to be carried in private any longer. By bringing them into the room and sharing them with an audience, something shifts. They become something to hold together rather than alone.
The new composition by Yannis Kyriakides asks the piano to hold what words cannot.
The work premiered at Kyoto Art Center in March 2026, and was subsequently presented at Muziekgebouw aan ‘t IJ, Amsterdam, as part of Holland Festival 2026.
Credits
Concept, Direction, Piano, Performance, Video, Text: Tomoko Mukaiyama
Performance, Text: Just van Bommel
Composition: Yannis Kyriakides
Video: Reinier van Brummelen
Technical Director: Yutaka Endo / Luftzug
Lighting and Stage Design: Amber Vandenhoeck
Sound System: Kikuno / Yuji Tsutsumida
Video Design: Simpei Mitani
Video Assistant: Neda Gueorguieva
Light Technician: Frank Hardy
Advisor text: Yuri Yamada
Producer: Naomi Russell
Production manager: Anca Turtoi
Graphic Design: Simpson Tse
Communication: Willem Schenk
Production: Tomoko Mukaiyama Foundation
Co-production: Kyoto Art Center, Holland Festival
Supported by: Fonds Podiumkunsten, Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst, Ammodo, Het Nieuwe Instituut, Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Japan, DutchCulture, Osaka Expo, CAN (Cultuur All Nippon), Multus
Premiere | Performances
21 – 22 March 2026 Kyoto Art Center, Kyoto (JP)
13 – 14 June 2026 Muziekgebouw aan ‘t IJ, Amsterdam (NL) — Holland Festival