Chisato Minamimura
Scored In Silence, Chisato Minamimura.
© Photo by: Mark Pickthall
A photograph from Scored In Silence, Chisato Minamimura, depicting a woman wearing a white gown, bending over. She is on a dark stage with a large projection of hand on hand in the background.
Scored In Silence, Chisato Minamimura
© Photo by: Mark Pickthall
A photograph from Scored In Silence, Chisato Minamimura.
Scored In Silence, Chisato Minamimura
© Photo by: Mark Pickthall
Mark of A Woman
© Photo by: Mark Pickthall
Mark of A Woman
© Photo by: Mark Pickthall
Mark of A Woman
© Photo by: Mark Pickthall
Chisato Minamimura is a Deaf performance artist, choreographer and BSL art guide. Born in Japan, now based in London, Chisato has created, performed and taught internationally and is currently a Work Place artist at The Place. Chisato has been involved in aerial performances with Graeae Theatre Company, London’s Paralympic Opening Ceremony and Rio’s 2016 Paralympic Cultural Olympiad. Chisato trained at Trinity Laban in London and holds a BA in Japanese Painting and MA from Yokohama National University.
Chisato approaches choreography and performance making from her unique perspective as a Deaf artist, experimenting with and exploring the visualisation of sound and music. By using dance and digital technology, Chisato aims to share her experiences of sensory perception and human encounters.
Contact details
Tom Curteis
Associate Producer
Artistic Directors
Chisato Minamimura
Online
Email: tcurteis@hotmail.co.uk
Website: http://chisatominamimura.com
Twitter: @CMinamimura
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/OFFICIALChisatoMinamimura
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chisatominamimura/
Mark of A Woman
Duration: 60 mins
Description: Mark of A Woman is an end on theatre production, which works best in mid-scale black box venues.
Extra information: The show contains BSL and Visual Vernacular, suitable for Deaf audiences. There are captions during the showing of the films, but not for any other part of the work. We are happy offer the script in advance if a person needs.
The show is designed to be seen with vibration, and there up to 50 Woojer straps available for audiences.
The show can be audio described and tours with audio description equipment.
Access Film
A film can be shown front of house/online around the performance which details the access offer in the performance.
People on road: 5/6
Freight: baggage
Scored in Silence
Duration: 1 hour
Description: Scored in Silence is an end on theatre production, which works best in mid-scale black box venues. A film version with various access offers is also available, which can be streamed online or screened in person.
Extra information: At the heart of the show is cutting edge visual and vibration technology. These are:
- Woojer straps, which are worn by audience members (up to 50 total), offering a tactile vibrational experience which is connected to the haunting sound composition.
- Hologauze, a projection material that created a 3D holographic illusion, reflecting the live performance, visual vernacular, animation and film footage of Deaf hibakusha.
Access & Language Translation:
This performance has English VoiceOver, with English captions and British Sign Language (BSL). We are very happy to collaborate and find ways of translating the production into your local language::
• A caption script and voice-over script in English can be provided, and this can be used for translation into your local language.
• When showing 3 or more performances Chisato can also learn and incorporate the local sign language into the performance. In order to do this, Chisato will need to meet with local Deaf people who have excellent Sign Language skills a day before the get-in begins.
• The show can be audio described and tours with audio description equipment.
Film packages are also available for in person and/or online screenings.
People on road: 5 people for live performance, including 2 BSL interpreters.
Freight: baggage
Deaf for 4'33"
Duration: Durational (6-8 hours, but can be flexible)
Description: Deaf for 4'33" is an installation work where Chisato performs live for 4 minutes and 33 seconds, every hour on the hour.
It can be responsive to environments, works well when there is a lot of passers by. Can be outdoors or indoors.
Extra information: This work takes inspiration from John Cage's score 4'33", this is Chisato's performative response from her Deaf perspective, where over the course of the day she slowly destroys an (old) piano to explore her sound. It was originally shown at Firstsite Gallery in Colchester, as part of We Are Invisible, We Are Visible (WAIWAV) in July 2022.
Simple tech set up, requires a locally sourced old piano and a TV screen.
People on road: 2
Freight: none
Hesychia
Duration: 10 minutes (can loop)
Description: A new visual vernacular performance film, created by Deaf artist Chisato Minamimura, enables audiences to experience myths and beliefs of ancient Greece and Egypt with all five senses.
The film Is projected on the ceiling, with accompanying Woojer straps, and works best in gallery/museum contexts.
Extra information: Created in partnership with Reading University’s Ure Museum, Hesychia – which is named using the Greek word for ‘silence’ - is a film which was projected onto the ceiling of the museum. Viewers experienced smells and tastes of ancient Greece and wore Woojer™ straps which use vibrations to provide another way for people to experience the sound in the performance.
The installation was complemented by Greek and Egyptian artefacts from the Ure Museum collection which tell stories about silence and sounds in the ancient world. It is part of Meeting Point, a programme led by contemporary arts agency, Arts&Heritage, which partners artists with museums and heritage sites to produce new works of art.
People on road: 3
Freight: necessary
Freight details: Projection screen, projector, Woojer straps
INPUT:OUTPUT
Duration: 10 minutes
Description: Immersive residency, where Chisato collaborates with a local sound artist and filmmaker to create a brand new film work and Deafscape in response the sounds from your local environment.
Trialled at Snape Maltings in Sep 2022 with Sound Artist Loula Yorke and Filmmaker Laurence Scott.
Extra information: This exploration is transferable to different sites and locations, and Chisato is open to exploring Deafscapes in a multitude of spaces.
People on road: 2
Freight: none
Chisato is interested in wraparound activities including:
- Post-show conversations about the ideas, themes and form of her work and practice more broadly.
- Artist conversation panels around Deaf-led creative practice and access. Recent examples of this include: DansFunk's Aesthetics of Access Conference in Sweden, and Do Fast Win More panel discussion as part of Arts & Heritage's Meeting Point programme.
- Workshops/masterclasses for professionals, non-professionals, and student/youth dance companies.
- Choreographing for professionals, non-professionals, and student/youth dance companies for theatre spaces, gallery spaces and site specific contexts.
The Essay: A different way to listen, with Chisato Minamimura
BBC Radio 3
Scored in Silence:
“an unflinching, but highly accessible, account of a catastrophe and the extraordinary resilience of survivors – despite a lack of support and understanding of their predicament long after the event. Scored in Silence is an eloquent warning about the stark choice between survival and mass destruction”
In Daily
“a marvellously expressive combination of sign language, gestures, facial expressions, and choreography clearly conveys not only the facts and the stories, but also a vast emotional narrative, drawing the audience in for a captivating hour”
Broadway World
“Minamimura’s performance was utterly absorbing. With poise and elegance she took us through the history that led to the fateful decision to drop the bombs”
ArtsHub
“Throughout this 55-minute work, Minamimura’s ability to conjure deft emotional landscape is without peer; she is our sign mime medium holding these stories, passing them on to audiences and leaving us to reflect on the emotional enormity and human consequence of those fateful days in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.”
Writing about Dance
“I am incredulous how much power a 50-minute performance can have to educate us, yet here it is. There can be no better storyteller than Chisato Minamimura, patching stories, nuclear science and news together in a poignant contemporary quilt of one place made infamous by political greed.”
Melissa Mostyn
Mark of A Woman:
“We feel every pin prick as Minamimura signs the stabbing of a needle on her arm, and the crash of tidal waves as she signs the story of colonisation. It generates a sense of anticipation which only makes us more captivated by the nature of Minamimura’s piece”
Liam O’Dell
Latest Video
Scored in Silence trailer. Scored in Silence is a solo sign language performance by London-based Deaf Japanese artist Chisato Minamimura. The show unpacks the hidden perspectives of Deaf people from the small number that survived the horrors of the atomic bomb atrocity in Japan in 1945.
Survivors of the A-bomb are known as “hibakusha,” and Scored in Silence is based on a period of research, interviews and original films of elderly Deaf people with lived experiences of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Minamimura brings these untold narratives into stark relief, touching upon the atrocity of the event and its aftermath, including the layers of discrimination experienced by these isolated members of Japanese society.
Mark of A Woman trailer. Mark of A Woman is a performance project by Chisato Minamimura, celebrating and exploring personal histories and authentic accounts of the undertold relationships between women and tattooing cultures. Using Visual Vernacular (the choreographed and poetic form of sign language), digital animation, kinetic projection and Woojer™ technology, it offers an accessible new exploration into women’s social, cultural and historical relationships to body marking.
