Collaboration with photographer ABE FRAJNDLICH on Azu minami‘s butoh dance performance
butoh dance with many ABE FRAJNDLICH‘s photo works
It looks like it jumped out of the photo by dancing with the same choreography as in the exhibition photo. Photo: ABE FRAJNDLICH
A special event and a performance by butoh artist Minami Azu held during the photographer ABE FRAJNDLICH major retrospective exhibition (May 20 ~ September 17, 2023) at the Fotografie Forum Frankfurt, a photography art center in Frankfurt, Germany. Frajndlich spontaneously photographed the Japanese Butoh dancer Minami Azu performing on the NYC subway. Then despite or because of the language barriers, a fruitful collaboration has developed between Minami and Abe throughout the years, based on location and concepts determined by both artists.
As a culmination of this, this time we dance live with the choreography of the photos we have taken so far. It organized in Minami Azu with staff led by Fotografie Forum Frankfurt’s Curitor Art Director Celiena.
Azu Minami
Drawing from her passion for illustration which began in childhood, Minami Azu began her art career as a designer after completing her studies at Musashino Art University. She transitioned into creating work for contemporary dance, butoh, and performance art by incorporating imagery created with text and drawing, and the dances that exist in mundane everyday life.
The year after the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake (and tsunami), Minami received The 44th Dance Critics Society of Japan New Face Award for her work “Scar Tissue 1”and“Scar Tissue 2”which she created from the image of her own surgical scars and the scars of the Tohoku earthquake.
2013 “Scar Tissue 3”, 2016 “Scar Tissue 4” announced. This project series has been performed at venues in Japan, in France by invitation to the Rencontres Chorégraphiques Internationales de Seine-Saint-Denis in 2017, and at Case Western Reserve University, USA.
In 2022, Minami received an NDA award at the New Dance for Asia (NDA).
Azu Minami
minamiazu.dance@gmail.com
Fotografie Forum Frankfurt, Jermany
