SHOES’

installation performance (2011)

Performance SHOES’ is full of light, fire, music, burlesque and even silence. – Raymond van den Boogaard, NRC Handelsblad, 5 May 2011.

concept

As the title reveals, shoes and pumps are the main character in Tomoko’s installation performance SHOES’. Tomoko has a great fascination for physicality and fashion. She stretches the focus of the audience to her feet, to the ceiling and to the monitors on the floor. Shoes are the dramatic counter point for the music she plays and performs. Shoes become almost human beings: they dance, they cry, they make love, vanish and die.
After the performance the installation is open to the public.

SHOES’ is a piano recital, an installation and a solo performance. SHOES’ is part of Tomoko Mukaiyama’s solo series Sonic Tapestry. This is part V. Her sonic projects are always presented in a visual environment. Her collage method of bringing music compositions from different musical periods together is what marks her series. She masters the piano literature from Baroque to the Romantic era and from contemporary minimalism to piano music with electronic accompaniment.
The collage technique in visual arts is for decades a known fact, but there is a world to discover in music collage as not many musicians have entered that area like Tomoko does. In SHOES’ parts of e.g. the French Suite by Bach are entwined with Three 2-Part Studies for Piano by American-Mexican composer Conlon Nancarrow. By mixing these two works and to frame them with improvisations and visual layers, the pieces sound different and are influencing one another. Tomoko: “Some compositions are based in the collective memory. These compositions you often hear on the radio, as phone tunes or are being used in films and documentaries. To use this music and mix it with something else, whether that is music or something visual, it creates a new context, a new listening and experience. This is what I find interesting to discover.”

SHOES’ presents fragments of the following compositions:
Johann Sebastian Bach French Suite No.2 in c-moll, BWV 813
John Dowland Flow My Tears
Frédéric Chopin Prelude No. 4 Opus 28
Yannis Kyriakides Satellites
Gyorgy Ligeti Étude 13: L’escalier du diable
Tomoko Mukaiyama Bon Bon
Tomoko Mukaiyama Berceuse for toy piano
Tomoko Mukaiyama improvisaties
Conlon Nancarrow Three 2-Part Studies for Piano
Frederic Rzewski Piano Piece No’4
Dmitri Shostakovitsj Prelude No.1
Karlheinz Stockhausen Klavierstück IX

https://youtu.be/WDBFwWECaZ0

photo: Sanne Peper

credits

concept, piano: Tomoko Mukaiyama
photo en video: Toru Nagahama, Tomoko Mukaiyama & Kiriko Mechanicus
collaboration shoe objects*: ArtEZ Fashion Masters | Shoe Design, Hester Vlamings Amber Verstegen, Deniz Terli, Jenna Lievonen
lighting design: André Pronk
video and sound: Igor Shumlyanskiy

production

Tomoko Mukaiyama Foundaion
Grand Theatre Groningen
De Doelen Rotterdam

support

Performing Arts Fund NL
Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds