Susan Buirge: The Cycle of Seasons (Episode 1)

First part of the series of four documentaries on Susan Buirge’s Cycle of Seasons, in which Catherine Shan makes the spectator feel the dance and its relation to the music. She also provides comments and interviews of the choreographer.

After working in the United States of America and in France, American choreographer Susan Buirge, figurehead of contemporary dance, moved to Japan at the beginning of the 1990s. There, she learned to respect the earth, space and nature. She initiated herself to the Shinto philosophy and immersed herself in it in the middle of sanctuaries, temples and paddy fields.

With Tomihisa Hida, a Japanese Shintoist priest, musician and composer, she created her Seasons during six years. She brought tradition and modernity together in a project that recalls the relation between men and nature. In her Cycle of Seasons, she combines western contemporary dance, traditional dance of agrarian inspiration (kaguras) and old Japanese music (gagaku).

She is committed to give back to contemporary music its original function by giving priority to abstraction and minimalism and by rejecting its theatrical and entertaining aspect that is, according to her, too dominant in the western countries.

The four pieces of The Cycle of Seasons (spring, summer, autumn and winter), accompanied by Tomihisa Hida’s music, pay tribute to the earth. They remind us that we must thank it, respect it, let it rest and celebrate it.