A Tender Rollercoaster Ride

In her work, Emi Kodama aims to draw people’s inner and outer worlds together to create an experience that feels narratively immersive. While telling a story, she focuses on engaging the visitor’s body in a way that helps them become more absorbed in the text. Physical sensations are used to bolster the imagination.

During her residency, Emi will be doing research to develop a one-on-one performance where she narrates a story while the spectator is gently moved by performers in a choreography. Their body will come to the forefront so that it’s as much a part of the story as the words.

Having your body positioned by others allows you to visualize yourself in a way that’s different from seeing yourself in a reflection or through the camera lens. Parallel to the text, the visitor might transform into a spoon, a fox, a mountain.

Emi often has a longing for a holiday from herself. She can appreciate a reprieve, however brief, in daily life, and she imagines others do too. By way of a story world that people can enter through language and their bodies, the audience will go on a journey, morphing and shifting in scale from the very small to the expansive, transforming from the animate to the inanimate, and moving through time in their memories or towards a projected future.