Akemi Takeya

`Since 1991 Takeya has been living and working in Vienna, where she has collaborated with artists in the fields of dance, theater, film/video, photography and music. She has created numerous dance, video and performance pieces in collaboration with such artists as Paul V. Weihs, Sam Auinger & Rupert Huber, Roberto Paci Dalo Dorfmeister, G.X. Jupitter Larsen, Sergio Messina, Bob Ostertag, Robin Rimbaud aka SCANNER, Jon Rose, Andrea Sodomka, Wolfgang Mitterer, Tom Cora, Werner Puntigam, Christian Fennesz, Tetsuo Furudate, Granular Synthesis etc….Her own solo works include Imeka（1997） and bodypoems_REFLECTION（1998）. For her third solo performance Drowning Fish she was awarded the Austrian Dance Production Prize 1999. Other performances include Yuragi （2000）, Terror by a blind stranger （2001）, Black Honey Drops （2001）, with her artistic supervisor Ko Murobushi, Shadow Pieces （2002）, and voice & body performance series multiple space （2001） & double space （2002） in collaboration with electronic musicians, and ZZ （2003-4） with an artistic supervisor Ong ken Seng. She conceived and coordinated the AJ Project, the Austria X Japan Dance and Performance Exchange Programme which took place in Yokohama （2002）, and Vienna, Budapest, and Prague （2003）. Recently, she created and premiered weathering （2005） with collaborator Ulf Langheinrich/ audiovisual environment and So what! （2006） in collaboration with Berliner band Rechenzentrum. Her most recent solo work is "FEELER" （2006）.

Takeya has set up her own voice & body performance method by interweaving the strategies of the internal formation of one's own inner energy, thus developing a language of her own. And, as a prolific writer she incorporates the thoughts from her journals, dreams, diaries and essays into her performance pieces, ultimately producing an unexpected and visceral fusion of sensory encounters. She thinks rationally and lyrically, with head and body, “eastern” and “western”, in oppositions, combinations, entanglements, sounds, spaces, movements, words and colours. She is a performer between cultures － no longer feeling attached to her Japanese origin, and not yet enough to Europe, her new abode. This tension field between cultures also is mirrored in the ambivalence　between the disciplined Japanese philosophy of the Path, and an urban inner conflict. These Takeya tries to bridge in her art, which is shaped by a fascinating fusion of eastern and western influences, her inner world and her integration of the outer world.

Akemi Takeya is working to make her performance, “FEELER”, into a series of solo performances. “FEELER” is an experimental work that explores the relations between physical changes and voice by showing ambivalence, where a person and a material which are both remote controlled. “The Pieces”, her short essays, is also among her activity objectives for the year 2007.