Fall: to drop, to be pushed, to choose to descend too quickly, to become paralyzed, to fall asleep, to fall into despair, to fall from heaven or into love, to become fallen, felled, as a tree or an idol or a man in battle. As in, at the Falls he was felled, and the boys fell faster, a maelstrom of limbs over the cascade, the water dropping from level to level like a giant hawk, such a natural act, a falling star, that arc into dark. ~Cassie Terman
The moment before the leap, the wall inside points to the beginning. Sit in this container every day, measuring the space between high and low.
She is afraid to fall, as am I. ~momoio

“Call what Shinichi does butoh or post-butoh or whatever you want; it amounts to great movement theater.”
Rachel Howard, San Francisco Chronicle, January 26, 2007

“what sets Shinichi Iova-Koga apart is how he’s willing to plunge deep enough into the unconscious to reach the strange terrain of the archetypical, endowing single instants of experience with waves of meaning and often disturbing beauty. With little fanfare, these moments can take one to the stratosphere and back, leading to such discursive thoughts as the nature of space/time and whether, as some physicists think, multiple dimensions exists simultaneously, folding in on each other like origami or the cerebral cortex....
Here is a man who can fall over backwards in a chair repeatedly and make each instance newly clownish and shocking. He rolls and, tied to a vine of red cloths, finds his physical limits anew. His leaps are brought up short by the tether that smacks him back to his starting place. But rather than leaving us with a reductive image of freedom versus entanglement, Iova-Koga creates a deeper, more nuanced picture of leaving and return--a cycle in which bounding and rebound are equally valid, of comparable interest, and unspoiled by Romantic hierarchies.”
~Ann Murphy, Writing Dance: Milk Traces

"each of its simple elements is deeply thoughtful and apt, from Sheila Antonia Bosco's spine-tingling soundscape to Allen Willner's fog-drenched lighting to Cassie Terman's poetic fragments... the real intrigue of "Milk Traces" is in the tiny, ever-so-intentional gestures, and in Iova-Koga's astonishing acts of self-puppetry. At one point, with Iova-Koga somehow contorted into a ball, his arms move with such deliberate individuality that they look like worms sprouting from an eerily headless torso. Later, when he slips inside a coat hanging from another rope (a body for this soul-in-waiting to inhabit?), his physical sleight of hand really does make it appear that the coat is a ghost about to possess him."

~Rachel Howard, San Francisco Chronicle

an inkBoat production

Conception | Performance
Shinichi Iova-Koga

Music
Sheila Antonia Bosco

Lighting
Allen Willner

Poetic Inspirations
Cassie Terman

Photos
(top) inkBoat

(bottom) Red Cat

Milk Traces the Fall

solo performance by Shinichi Iova-Koga

 
         
  Milk Traces, inkBoat, Shinichi Momo Iova-Koga  
   

         

 

 
       
Shinichi Iova-Koga Milk Traces