It has been a while since I present my thesis project. However, I would like to reflect before I move on to the next stage of my life. My thesis project, “we carry to depart” was premiered in February 2023 at Barnett Theater at the Ohio State University. The creative process took me almost a year and a half to complete. The journey felt really long but super short at the same time.

As a dance artist, during this whole three years of the MFA program, I was in the endeavor of looking for “who truly I am” and what is my “authentic” artistic voice that represents Yukina Sato. I came to the graduate program straight from the bachelor program. It is a rare pathway for people pursuing a career as a dancer. However, this opportunity gave me a place and time to test, fail, explore, and seek what I really want to do.

The key term here is authenticity. I viewed and investigated myself from both outside and inside. From the external point of view, I questioned how I am perceived by others. What community do I belong to? How society defines people in categories, called identity. From the internal view, I asked what shaped me into who I am. Is it the people around me, the space I live in, my nationality, or my body?

Also, dance is tangible but intangible in a way. It requires the physical ability and duration of time to describe intangible things. Always battling with time and ideas. If you exist in the dance industry where so many people have tried and executed various amazing ideas and creative approaches, what you can do? What makes you absolutely unique? How you are in conversation with the past, current, and future?

In my second year, I focused on my present self and created the practice of “body-doodling.” Every day, I took time only 1-2mins to log the location, time, and sensation. And I created a short phrase inspired by the daily record. So if you do it for 7 days, it creates 7 phrases. The practice of dailiness of making and tuning into my mind and body. One example was

Shaky legs
Hugging the void
Pacing fast
Lost the sound of shoes
Scared to go out in the lights
I wasn’t full

Then I also invited 5 dancers with me to try the same exercise. My interest was to examine the various perspective on archiving themselves every day. Also, questioned how to log ourselves daily to trace the change consciously.

This practice informed me to move on to the next step. During the daily log, the most impactful part for me was where I reside in my body. If I was laying on the grass or sitting on the dining chair… where my body created very different sensations, emotions, and thoughts. It could be I would be in the space because I had to do so and so that day, however even though I did have control over my schedule, my body was affected by the “space”.

I have talked a lot about “space” in the last blog post. For my thesis project, I focused on the physical space such as a classroom, a city, and a living room in the house. Especially I deeply searched the location I grew up. In December 2022, I had a chance to be able to back to my hometown after three years since COVID-19 hit. I felt the hometown was no longer what I remembered. Everything looked, heard, and sensed new to me. I visited many places that were memorable to me and videotaped the locations. Also, I recorded many soundscapes. These files created a distinct outline of the piece.

In the last year of my MFA program, I was super fortunate to have 6 dancers with me to play and experiment together. Some dancers had been working with me for two years! They were willing to be with me ups and downs. I was immobile due to my knee surgery in Autumn 2022, so it was really difficult to know exactly what I want during the rehearsal time. I asked dancers to try many prompts and improvisations. I sometimes lost in experiments or composition, not liking what I suggest, finding interesting movements, or back to scratch. (*I don’t think not many artists don’t disclose how rough the creative process can be — Just a thought…)

The piece starts at the train station. There is a video of a train departing playing in roop in the background. A dancer, Aya Venet sits on the bench, waiting for the train. “ガタン、ゴトン…(the sound of the train moving)” Then the backdrop video infuses more video clips at the stations and crossing in Tokyo while more dancers start to walking across the stage. When all five dancers sit on tiny benches, there start pushing each other to claim their own spot on the tiny bench. Transitioning the train station to my hometown, where many waves of people walk directly to their destination. The kinetic energy of urban life was embodied by five dancers through simple walking back and forth between two benches. The synchronous sound of feet, non-stop walking back and forth, and direct and intense focus was formed by the walk.

A dancer, Yitong Chen disturbed this established system by walking across the dancers. Yitong’s movement sparks on the stage, shouting “1, 2, 3, 4!” and transferring their energy to others. All the movement was extracted from the so-called box phrase. The number 1,2,3,4 is the surfaces or directions of dancers’ orientation on the stage. And specific number is in relation to specific memories with family members. Their movement becomes bigger and travels across the stage. More spreading their range of movement and suddenly a dancer, Rani Bawa, who only keeps walking shouts the frustration, “AHHHHHHHHH!!!” The frustration comes out from being alienated from the group. This section represents how people establish the system and the reality of whether some can adopt it and or not. Her shout transitions the scene to the physical space created by two benches, representing Japan and the U.S. Dancers leap over and push and pull them, and the distance between benches gets closer and closer and makes them blend into one long bench. Then, dancers transform benches and create many different spaces such as a slider at the schoolyard, a hiking trail, a dining table in the kitchen, and lastly a small closet, where I hid many internal emotions, trauma, and thoughts.

Coming out of the closet segways to my solo. I travel across diagnose from the left corner to the right corner. Each movement represents specific life events and memories from the day I landed in Oklahoma till the current moment. When I reached the right corner, two dancers, Kara Philoon and Aya Venet enter the stage. Their duet consists of many weight shifts. They represent the relationship between mother and daughter. The mother supports the daughter but eventually, the daughter has to leave the mother and move forward without her. I incorporated my experience of recovering from a knee injury as a method of slowing myself down to reflect on my relationship with people around me and myself. The rock music start kicks in and as the duet finishing, I am blasting the energy on the stage. Throw my body out, kicks and turn, flipping my arms around… it is the internal pain and acceptance of what I become. The dancers observed me from a distance on the stage. I slow down the movement to take out the knee pads and give a piece of them to each dancer. The knee pad stands for my shed skin, a part of my body. I give a piece of myself to my dancers as members of the collective identity we created throughout the piece.

The last unison showcases my movement vocabulary which consists of influence by six dancers and what I have been trained and learned. It is a mixture of the past and the embodiment of the current self. And all dancers drifted away from the right corner to the left corner leaving me alone on the stage. They carry each other to leave me behind. The last scene cites the very beginning. I stand in the same spot that Aya was sitting down and rephrase her movement in different ways how we create the space and how I leave the past behind, how I carry forward and depart to the new chapter of my life.

This piece is the creative process and archive at the same time. I feel like it made me realize the power of dance-making and how I want to embody my vision as a member of the human race.

Where to go next? — Minnesota awaits me.