AYUKA
Ayu Permata Sari and Ayaka Nakama met at the start of 2022 during a residency and exchange programme. Their meeting was, to a certain degree, fortuitous, relaxed, intimate, and reserved at the same time (far distant and unaccustomed). Both dance artists view their collaboration as a process of sisterhood. During their tanzhaus nrw residency, they will turn all possible manner of materials that relate to their encounter and their first artistic examination into productive matter. Ayu and Ayaka agreed to unpack and deepen each moment they shared to reevaluate it. This immersion is an attempt to read the distance differently and to reframe the meaning of a “relationship”.
AYUKA combines the names Ayu and Ayaka. The title mirrors a depiction of the relationship between Ayu and Ayaka that forms during this process. AYUKA also represents an as-yet undeveloped method of both to connect more, as dance artists, in a collaborative effort.
At the end of their Düsseldorf work phase, Ayu Permata Sari & Ayaka Nakama will share the results of their rehearsals and research with an audience.
Ayu Permata Sari is a choreographer and dancer from North Lampung, Indonesia. She founded the Ayu Permata Dance Project as a platform to support herself and her companions in the development of their practice. Since 2020, Ayu has been focusing more on the role of gender in the Lampung Pepadun tribe. Her work Kami Bu-ta earned her the Jasi Bakti Award of the Asian Technology Festival in Johor, Malaysia, in 2018. She toured with her solo TubuhDang TubuhDut, also in the German-speaking countries. Load? premiered at Zürcher Theater Spektakel in 2021. From 2022 until 2024, Ayu Permata Sari will be in a close collaboration with Ayaka Nakam. This exchange was initiated by paradancer (Yogyakarta) and Dance Box (Kobe).
Ayaka Nakama is a choreographer and dancer and lives in Kobe, Japan. Following her education, she participated as a stipendiary in a dance study programme in Kobe, organised by the Agency for Cultural Affairs and NPO Dance Box, at the Rambert School of Ballet and Contemporary Dance (London). She worked with Mika Kurosawa, Reina Kimura, Contact Gonzo, Toshiki Okada (chelfitsch), as well as others. While she is dedicated to the manner in which a body is choreographed by someone or something, she pursues a phenomenon of which she believes it can only be called dance. Her 2019 work Freeway Dance was presented in Europe at Kunstenfestivaldesarts Brussels, Centre Pompidou Paris as well as at the Berlin Festspiele. Ayaka Nakama won the 16th Kobe Nagata Culture Encouragement Prize in 2022. She is a Saison Foundation Fellow from 2022 to 2023.