- Vancouver based dance artist
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choreoraphic work

   

whereverever

whereverever

created and performed by: Mardon + Mitsuhashi

Videography and editing: Alysha Seriani

Composer: Sasha J. Langford

Costume design: Jae Woo Kang

Additional props and costumes: Natalie Purschwitz

Lighting design: Nien-Tzu Weng

Technical managers: Jack Chipman, Ben Wilson

Artistic mentors: Justine A. Chambers, Xwechtaal Dennis Joseph, Mala Kline

Dramaturgy support: Joanna Garfinkel

Accessibility consultation: Cara Eastcott, Amy Amantea

Audio description: Andrea Cownden

whereverever, a new work by Mardon + Mitsuhashi—the collaborative entity of Alexa Mardon and Erika Mitsuhashi—made with media artist Alysha Seriani and composer Sasha J. Langford. Across a sixteen-minute video and forty-minute dance performance without intermission, whereverever playfully traces possible beginnings and belonging by following the question “how did we get here?”

Recorded on location in Mardon + Mitsuhashi’s respective ancestral homelands, Finland and Japan, the video intertwines visits with relatives, folk and contemporary dancing, and observational images of the built and natural environments with a focus on gesture, movement, and impulse. As the video cuts rhythmically between each place, it oscillates between a sense of distance and presence, past and present, as Mardon + Mitsuhashi orientate themselves as visitors to their hereditary homes and construct a postcard for their future kin. A sampled glitch in the soundtrack, anaglyph effect on images, and a doubling in framing across the two places, disrupts a sense of linear time to unfold a vastness of relations.

In the dance performance that follows, Mardon + Mitsuhashi present a movement practice of “blurring” to a musical score performed live by Langford. Through a score of improvisational tasks, they perform a duet of imperfect unison in which dance becomes a devotional technology to understand their bodies differently, both in relation to each other and the histories they hold.

Premiere: Western Front, Vancouver, Canada May 2023
Hold On Let Go, Vancouver, Canada January 2024
Spring Roll Festival, Turku, Finland April 2024

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 by Erika Mitsuhashi Sound: Loose Truth and Aloe Vera by Jack Jutson Projection Design by Irfan Brkovic commission for the Simon Fraser University SCA Fall dance repertory class   Something started loosely and with loose truth.  An exquisite corpse,

by Erika Mitsuhashi
Sound: Loose Truth and Aloe Vera by Jack Jutson
Projection Design by Irfan Brkovic
commission for the Simon Fraser University SCA Fall dance repertory class

Something started loosely and with loose truth.
An exquisite corpse, a relay, a recursive string of emergent moments.
Action and idling, ways to keep going and ways of being together.
Impossibilities asking, how can we enter different planes of ourselves?

Dedicated to my friends and special dedication to my dear friend Mikey. Special thank you to Jack Jutson and Irfan Brkovic.

November 17 – 19, 2022, FEI AND MILTON WONG EXPERIMENTAL THEATRE – SFU GOLDCORP CENTRE FOR THE ARTS

on the cosmic shore

on the cosmic shore

current research for group presentation glint

in collaboration with Daniel O’Shea (new media)

peer mentorship Francesca Frewer and Alexa Mardon

performers: Alexa Mardon, Allie Shiff, Bynh Ho, Francesca Frewer, Lexi Vajda, Mia Pelayo

sound: Adam Asnan

Erika Mitsuhashi will present a work-in-progress sharing of on the cosmic shore, a performance and installation that explores relational practices of drifting movement and attention between living and non-living performers. The installation includes sonic and scenographic partners that encourage intimacy with the materiality of the present. Erika’s horizontal approach to who or what can be a performer, allows for movement to surface in unexpected places including in the light refracted off reflective materials, in the bodies of the performers and in the attention/spatial discoveries of the audience.

Premiere: July 14-16, 2022 at The Scotiabank Dance Centre

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Mardon + Mitsuhashi present: George The Parasite Tribute Concert

Mardon + Mitsuhashi present: George The Parasite Tribute Concert

Mardon + Mitsuhashi experimental livestream from Left Of Main, NYE 2020

A tribute to SF Ho’s work George The Parasite

The shape of something changes as you move through it

The shape of something changes as you move through it

created and performed by: Francesca Frewer & Erika Mitsuhashi

sound by: Pender Street Steppers (Jack Jutson and Liam Butler)

projections by: Erika Mitsuhashi & Jack Chipman

text by: Francesca Frewer

costume by: Jae Woo Kang

technical direction: Jack Chipman

When faced with questions beyond our understanding, how do we make sense of ourselves, our perceptions, and one another? Erika and Francesca explore these questions of fundamental uncertainty through several different modalities, seeking to discover different ways that they can be resolved in practice, in the body, in movement, and in being together.

Working with improvised text and speaking, they generate fictional narratives on the spot, weaving a continually shifting landscape of truth and fiction that emerges organically through the challenge of maintaining a difficult task. Through choreographed movement they explore subtleties of being present with another person within a complex structure. Durational movement scores provide a doorway into a more patient, contemplative questioning of the themes in the work.

They seek complexity, simultaneously embracing and subverting the meaning-making that happens in performance.

Excerpt 1: “The Array: The Shape of the Galaxy” presented by Upintheair Theatre, The Cultch Greenhouse, November 2019

Excerpt 2: Left of Push #3 presented by plastic orchid factory, Left of Main, February 2020

Premiere: presented by plastic orchid factory, Left of Main, May 2022

photo credit: Victor Tran

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TOUR

TOUR

Created by Mardon + Mitsuhashi (Alexa Mardon, Erika Mitsuhashi)

In this work, performers act as tour guides, leading an audience through the space and making short stops on the way to share their “instantaneous expertise” on the history of objects, their surroundings as well as their own bodies and personal histories. TOUR brings attention to the discomfort that comes along with witnessing facts and reality treated with irreverence. How do the institutions we inhabit every day impose their realities and histories upon us? How might we gesture towards other ways of inhabiting them?

Performers: Roberto Soria & Devon Snell (Toronto), Andrea Cownden & Byhn Ho (Vancouver)

Platforms for TOUR’s research and development:

Toronto Dance Theatre’s Emerging Voices, December 2017, mentors: Ame Henderson and Christopher House

Premiere at OFFTA Montreal, May 2019 with performers: Roberto Soria and Devon Snell Recipient of the OFFTA 2019’s Hybridity Grant, an award granted “to an individual artist or group for the outstanding hybridity of their artistic practice”.

Presentation at Dance In Vancouver, November 20, 2019 with performers: Andrea Cownden and Bynh Ho.

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Dust

Dust

Created by Erika Mitsuhashi and Francesca Frewer

A thought-provoking solo contemporary dance piece which incorporates sound, new media, and striking designs to investigate themes of volatility, change, decay, and the unbound. The audience is made witness to the progressive undoing of the performance space and the performer herself. A backdrop of paper, installed by the artists, alludes to a history beginning prior to the audience's arrival, and organic materials in progressive states of decay emphasize the passing of time.

Performance: Francesca Frewer

New Media Design: Daniel O’Shea

Sound Design: Adam Asnan

Costume/textiles: Nellie Gossen

Set design and materials: Erika Mitsuhashi & Francesca Frewer

Platforms for Dust’s research and development:

Artistic residency and work in progress showing at PAUL Studios Berlin, September 2018.

Artistic residency and work in progress showing at Left of Main Vancouver, hosted by plastic orchid factory , October 2018.

Artistic and technical residency at the Scotiabank Dance Centre, April 2019.

Premiere as part of the Scotiabank Dance Centre’s International Dance Day programming, April 2019.

Created with support from the Canada Council for the Arts.

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Tender Engine

Tender Engine

Created by Mardon + Mitsuhashi (Alexa Mardon + Erika Mitsuhashi)

Tender Engine was created in collaboration between choreographer Alexa Mardon, choreographer/set designer Erika Mitsuhashi, programmer Brynn McNab, a recursive neural network named UXIE, sound designer Paul Paroczai and performers Elissa Hanson and Zahra Shahab. Tender Engine is a contemporary dance/installation piece, with highly integrated new media elements (algorithms, projection design). An RNN which has learned to speak from the language the performers have spoken to it underscores the work. The work plays the line between intimate storytelling and highly performative false expertise, examining our relationship to language, technology, and meaning making.

Programmer: Brynn McNab

Sound designer: Paul Paroczai

Performers: Elissa Hanson and Zahra Shahab

Platforms for Tender Engine’s research and development:

Shadbolt Centre for the Arts Artists in Residence, January 2018

In-progress showing at Kinetic Dance Studios Halifax Open Studios Series, January 2018

Boca Del Lupo Artist in Residence, March 2018

Artistic residency at Left of Main Studios, hosted by plastic orchid factory, March 2019

Premiere, co-productions with VIVO Media Arts, June 2019

This work was developed with the support of Canada Council for the Arts, BC Arts Council and VIVO Media Arts Centre.

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The Saddest Girl at the Party

The Saddest Girl at the Party

Created and performed by Francesca Frewer and Erika Mitsuhashi

The Saddest Girl at the Party is a dance-theatre duet created by contemporary dance artists Francesca Frewer and Erika Mitsuhashi. Conceived as an ode to the attempt and a lament for that which has been given up on, it uses movement crafted into games and absurd scenarios to compose a dynamic performance piece which lies somewhere between playful and heartbreaking, but falling (maybe, almost) just shy of each.

Excerpt presented at the Shooting Gallery Performance Series at the Dusty Flowershop Cabaret in Vancouver, April 2017

Presentation as part of New Work's Annual Season Launch, curated by Justine A. Chambers at the Orpheum Annex Theatre Vancouver, September 2017

Presentation as part of Upintheair Theatre’s 2018 rEvolver Theatre Festival at The Cultch Greenhouse Theatre in Vancouver, May 2018

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Valuation Score

Valuation Score

Created by Mardon + Mitsuhashi (Alexa Mardon + Erika Mitsuhashi)

In this two-part score, the dancers first use their bodies as tools for appraisal, doing instantaneous physical research in order to re-tell the history of art objects back to the audience.
In part two, the dancers co-author a hierarchy of concepts and objects, attempting to attribute a movement equivalent to each thing according to its value in capitalism.

Performed by: Felicia Lau and Alexa Mardon

Performance at Surrey Art Gallery's inFlux, in response to Mimetic Workshop: Studio Still Lifes of Fiona Ackerman and Kelly Lycan curated by Jordan Strom, Surrey, September 2016.

New Beginnings

New Beginnings

Created and performed by Mardon + Mitsuhashi ( Alexa Mardon + Erika Mitsuhashi)

New Beginnings is a collaborative project between Erika Mitsuhashi and Alexa Mardon. Part sales pitch, part bad TedTalk and part personal archive, the piece is inspired by string theory, the infinite possibilities of the self in the multiverse, the repetitive performance of female affective labour, and the traces left in our bodies by the women who came before us. Using psuedo-science and hospitality as foolproof methods for time travel, we invite the audience to join us in sifting through the wreckage of the future and preparing for the detritus of the past.

Excerpt presented at Toronto Love-In's PS We Are All Here series, Toronto, July 2016.

this room has curved edges

this room has curved edges

Created and performed by Erika Mitsuhashi

this room has curved edges is a solo work created and performed by Erika Mitsuhashi. Enmeshed in memories of rooms both real and imagined, this room has curved edges interlaces the secretive, changing, architecture of dreams with lived personal experience. Drawing aesthetic inspiration from cinematic master Wong Kar-wai, the shifting movement score draws the audience into the dreamscape and imagination of an individual. With the body as a conduit into the psychological realm, the piece experiments with dream-like sensibilities of time, logic and space.

Premiere at the Powell Street Festival , Vancouver, August 2014.