Ikebanapapa

Ikebanapapa is a new multimedia performance created by Toronto-based artist Philip Nozuka. A performer and his kuroko, a stagehand in traditional Japanese theatre, practice a ritual to commemorate their ancestors and create new rites to honour and encounter those who have come and gone before them. This work combines ambient electronic music, live video, and contemporary interpretations of Japanese traditions including Ikebana, the art of floral arrangement, and Bon Odori, a dance performed during Japan’s annual Obon festival, to welcome the spirits of ancestors. Responding to the void of unlearned traditions from his paternal family, Philip establishes a personal language of ritual to bridge the generational divide. Ikebanapapa is an act of creative reclamation, a way to reach across time and commune with the ghosts of an unmet lineage to evoke the presence of family.