Aine E Nakamura  

voice, body, performance, composition, improvisation, mixed art, stories, theater

Aine E. Nakamura, with the piece she presented from her transborder project, Under an Unnamed Flower, 
by virtue of a melodic use of the voice, of an original process of deconstructing and reconstructing language, 
of freeform figurations and three-dimensional words that without prejudice reach across the boundaries of Theatre, Dance and Music, 
bouncing us within a poetic vortex of light, that spills forth visions, dreams, memories, colours and feelings, catapults us – 
while maintaining an uninterrupted relationship with her personal past, her family and one of her countries Japan – 
into a Present that is highly ambivalent and complex, in which the dramatic events of History, such as wars, the violence of invasions, 
the uprooting and loss of one’s personal land, intertwine with the breath of her rarefied and enigmatic narrations, 
implacably becoming entangled in her private life as an exile, as a wanderer who pleas for non-violence and quiet resistance.  

Intimately connected to her château intérieur and the surrounding spiritual world, her ashen face appearing historiated 
by the snow, Aine E. Nakamura, as an unnamed flower that lives at the site in the wind, her legs and arms constantly moving 
for the accuracy of the Ritual, her nimble eyes scrutinising contemporary society, her ears collecting the stories that spin 
through the airwaves as an antidote to oblivion, in a symbiotic relationship with Nature (plants, animals, earth) and Humanity 
in its entirety, absorbing their every mood, listens to their voices which she then relaunches in a peacefully “revolutionary” way, 
reclaiming the emotional universes that each of us carries within.  

As she thus moves away from the routine courses of performance and the conventional modulations of sound in the western tradition, 
with an enthralling plurilingualism unfettered from the obligations of reality, Aine E. Nakamura morphs into a sort of hypnotic pied piper 
who, behind her apparent childlike awe, leaves us spellbound – like one of those creatures in a fairy – talking in soft tones of things that she 
actually steadfastly disapproves of, and refusing, even when the darkness forces its way like a spectral beast into the labyrinth of existence, 
the unavoidability of compromise and objecting to the oppressive social coercion of the political pigsty. - Stefano Ricci and Gianni Forte

Winner, Venice Biennale 2022 Site-Specific Performance

    What formal details do I choose or not choose? What grammar do I create or not create? What cultural context do I evoke or not evoke? I pursue sensibility and spirituality as my aesthetics through a focus on the nuanced possibilities of my voice. My voice is of and with my body. I am a singer, and I am song itself. 

I recently focus on orality and movements of body. Stories, imagery, and sometimes objects are also my creative approaches for my theatricality. My artistic quest began as a search for my own language to embrace and express self, which cannot be told simply through one disciplinary or cultural frame. I moved closer to my woman artist identity, acknowledging my transnational complexity and ambiguity. I cross the boundaries within and outside of my body and reach out from my undefined identity. Defying traditional power structures that preclude new ways of feelings, I nurture my self, my spiritual, artistic and intellectual space, and multiple delicate stories in a new art I investigate. This is my way of showing resilience and resistance. Through my approach toward and embodiment in wider space, time, nature and peace, and questions on hierarchy in music, linguistic and cultural grammar, I wish to be a song for inner, beings, and relations. 

I presented my new work Under an Unnamed Flower during an invitation at the 50th International Theatre Festival at the Venice Biennale as a winner of Site-Specific Performance (Jun 26-Jul 3 2022). On the occasion of The 2022 Stückemarkt at Berliner Festspiele Theatertreffen, I was invited to revisit, refine and present Circle hasu We plant seeds in the spring of mountains in Berlin, Germany (May 11-15 2022). I premiered this one-woman performance project at the Gallatin Galleries in New York City (Jul 16-Aug 13 2021), in which I presented my art language through multiple performances and media presentations.

My other solo performances and installations include mixed art at HfM Hanns Eisler Berlin (2022), mixed music at A Concert of Electronic Music in honor of Mario Davidovsky (2019), 8-channel sound art work at Dias de Música Electroacústica (2019), and mixed art at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts (2018). Premieres of my compositions include 6 stories at the New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival performed with cellist Madeleine Shapiro (2018), The Story of Oica at the October New Music Festival in Finland with Mikro Ensemblen (2018), and The Unseen World with International Contemporary Ensemble at the Abrons Arts Center (2019). My other appearances include The Two directed by Dmitry Krymov (New York Theater Workshop project, 2019), and OPERA Ensemble at the Watermill Center through my artist-in-residence with Lucie Vítková and the ensemble (2021). I have curated and produced collaborative art events Listening to Nature supported by Tishman Environment and Design Center (2017), and Exploration in Sound and Body supported by First Performance in New York (2018). I am an awardee of the Venice Biennale 2022 Site-Specific Performance Grant, The Fulbright Fellowship in the arts (2021-2022, Berlin, Germany), The Leo Bronstein Homage Award from New York University for my MA studies, The Honorable Mention Award for the 2020 Pauline Oliveros New Genre Prize for my art of voice and body, and the APNM 2019 Electronic Music Competition. I have given workshops, talks and lecture-recitals at several places including Theatertreffen at Berliner Festspiele, University of Pittsburgh, McGill Schulich School of Music, and Humboldt University of Berlin.
In addition to my artistic pursuit, I studied orality in ritualistic songs by women and villagers in Okinawa and Yaeyama supported by the Asian Pacific and American Institute at NYU, and the Dean's Award for Summer Research, and will research peace politics, and movements of silk and Asian Americans/Asians at the New York Public Library through its short-term research fellowship in 2022-2023.

My mentors include composers Elizabeth Hoffman, Joan La Barbara, actor Anna Deavere Smith, scholar-artists Nina Katchadourian, and Michael D. Dinwiddie from my studies at New York University (MA 2020, Thesis: My Art of Voice and Body); composers and musicians Richard Harper, Jane Ira Bloom, Kirk Nurock, Diane Moser, Dave Douglous, and Chris Stover from my studies at the Jazz and Contemporary Music at The New School; Isamu Goya, under whom I studied Okinawan traditional music (uta-sanshin) in Noborikawa-ryu; Itaru Mitsuzuka from my early classical voice training; and scholar Yoshinori Murai who taught me the viewpoint of chiisaki-tami (small people).

I resided in Berlin, Germany in 2021-2022 as a grantee of the Fulbright fellowship for my peace-promoting art project. I was a Fulbright fellow at College of Music, Composition, at Universität der Künste Berlin (Berlin University of the Arts), and Institute for Musicology and Media studies of Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (Humboldt University of Berlin). From fall 2022, I reside in Berkeley, California, for a doctorate in Composition.
  
 
 

“Its intense vulnerability and the beautiful layering of voices—distant, close, together with [her] movements, flowing was very moving.” Annea Lockwood
 

"Circle Hasu evokes in me a deep need and desire for a geopoetical sensibility that emphasizes care and repair. Acts of recovery held together by the delicate bonding of voice, body, and memories voiding otherness." Ogutu Muraya
 

“Circle Hasu We plant seeds in the spring of mountains” she impressively switches between her Japanese and American identity. In fact the cultural split of the two identities is constitutional for her minimalistic, contemplative yet intense performance on stage. It is astonishing how deep the simple lines of her storytelling took us into the alienations of an Asian woman in New York. And the elegance of her choreography up into the tips of her fingers provide a glimpse into the rich traditions of Japanese dance. Along with her short performative interventions, Aine Nakamura transformed the space in front of the Haus der Berliner Festspiele into a sacral landscape in which every detail suddenly became important and a little stone was valued equally to a vulnerable and fragile living existence." Laudatory speech Stückemarkt by Thomas Frank, Marleen Ilg, Enrico Lübbe (Schauspiel Leipzig)