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Dancer and choreographer Takako Segawa explores how Japanese culture echoes through Canada in new dance performance, Echoes: Vibrations from Japan to Canada. Photo credit: Yves Soglo.

In her upcoming dance performance, Echoes: Vibrations from Japan to Canada, dancer and choreographer Takako Segawa explores how even the smallest actions from the past lead us to where we are today.

Choreographed and performed by Segawa, this original dance performance takes viewers on a journey through time and space, exploring how echoes of Japanese culture resonate in Canada and beyond. Hosted by the Ottawa Dance Directive, Echoes: Vibrations from Japan to Canada premieres at Arts Court in Ottawa from Nov. 21 to 23.

Nikkei Voice has followed Segawa as she developed Echoes, from two short dance films created during the pandemic to directing and co-producing the 60-minute production, where she performs alongside three taiko drummers and a soprano vocalist.

“[It’s] very exciting because it’s the first time I will have done a full-length production in Canada. It started with a few ideas, and then they grew organically,” Segawa tells Nikkei Voice in an interview.

Segawa is an Ottawa-based dancer, choreographer, and teacher from Kochi, Japan. Along with studying contemporary Western dance styles, she has trained in traditional and contemporary Japanese arts and movement styles. Her 20-year career includes performances throughout North America, Asia, Africa, and Europe.

The performance is divided into four parts, starting with Cocoon, where Segawa emerges like a butterfly, symbolizing her journey leaving Japan and ultimately arriving in Canada. Segawa draws inspiration from the theory that even the smallest flutter of a butterfly’s wings can ripple around the world and affect global change.

“Those four parts capture several epic life moments for me,” says Segawa.

Echoes is an expression of heritage, culture, and history, exploring how her story is shaped by the experiences of her ancestors and Japanese Canadians before her. Their voices and actions resonate today, reminding us that each decision and action we make also leaves an echo behind.

Segawa examines how echoes of Japanese culture resonate in Canada through Japanese Canadians—whether born in Japan or Canada—who continue to celebrate their heritage. What better way to explore the reverberation of culture than through the resonant sound of taiko drums?

Segawa leans into her background to create the next part of the performance, Matsuri. Her hometown, Kochi, is known for its Yosakoi Festival, an annual three-day folk dance festival. Growing up, Segawa spent summers with her mother, teaching dances to community members leading up to the festival.

Today, that culture continues through Segawa. As the leader of the Ottawa Yosakoi Team, she teaches the lively and energetic folk dance in Canada.

For Matsuri, Segawa works with musicians and taiko performers Heidi Chan, Kyoko Ogoda, and Melisa Kamibayashi-Staples to bring the booming taiko sounds to the stage. While a traditional Japanese art form, she wanted to cultivate it in a modern way, one of those ways is by featuring an all-female ensemble of taiko drummers. The joy, collaboration, and build-up to the performance reminded Segawa of the lead-up to a community festival.

“Our rehearsals together also bring a sense of community. Each person with their different skill sets, all working together. It’s matsuri,” says Segawa.

In Part 3, titled Sho ga nai, Segawa reflects on how Japanese Canadians used this expression in response to their forced uprooting, dispossession, and internment beginning in 1942. Growing up in Japan, Segawa was familiar with “sho ga nai” as a practical mindset, meaning, “it is what it is.”

In this part, Segawa honours the Japanese Canadians sent to the prisoner-of-war camps 80 years earlier. As a first-generation Japanese immigrant, Segawa pays tribute to the Japanese Canadians who arrived before her and the hardships they faced and offers healing. This part expands upon a dance video Segawa created in 2021. She teams up with soprano singer and taiko drummer Noriko Hashimoto again, who, like Segawa, is a Japanese artist trained in a Western art style.

“I want to embrace the history and not forget as an immigrant,” says Segawa.

The performance concludes with the final part, Embrace, which explores the theme of healing, as each performer celebrates their unique journeys and offers a blessing to vibrate through future generations.

Bringing Echoes into a full production has allowed Segawa to grow as an artist by working with and learning from her fellow artists and collaborators. Each artist brought their background, culture, and expertise, adding layers, nuance, and colour to the performance and developing it further than she could on her own.

“They all offer different expressions on stage, which gives more unique results than just me as a dancer,” says Segawa.

“It’s being adaptable and fluid enough to include the magic the other performers are giving me.”

While it has been a long process, Segawa has grown significantly in various aspects of dance. For example, collaborating with producer Donna Woods has enhanced her skills in organization, outreach, marketing, budgeting, and all aspects of the performance process.

Echoes also represents a deeper understanding and appreciation of Segawa’s Japanese heritage. Earlier in her career, while studying at the London Contemporary Dance School and touring Europe, she was often the only Asian dancer in the room. She challenged assumptions about her training and skills by rejecting her Japanese culture as a dancer. After creating Echoes and working with other Japanese Canadian artists, she is embracing and celebrating her Japanese culture.

“My focus was on being a good, contemporary Western dancer trying to fit into the Western world. But after experiencing how Japanese Canadian communities can both celebrate their sameness and differentness while retaining their heritage and also having gone through my own growth, something clicked that allows me to embrace my heritage without apology,” says Segawa.

“That’s magical, and I just wanted to do it for my son as well.”

Echoes reflects a hybrid blend of Segawa’s dance training in Europe, Japan, and Canada. She hopes audiences will recognize that Japanese culture can evolve and adapt as new generations explore their heritage, and these cultural echoes grow and change.

“It’s all for Japanese Canadians to see that their culture can live on,” says Segawa.

“It is a fusion of my entire life experience while living in several countries. So I feel that Echoes overlaps with the past, yet it points towards the future, [a] modern take on Japanese identity.”

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Echoes: Vibrations from Japan to Canada premieres at Arts Court in Ottawa, Nov. 21 to 23. Find tickets and more information here.

Segawa plans to tour with the streamlined version of Echoes in 2025.

THIS ARTICLE WAS REPRINTED FROM NIKKEI VOICE’S NOVEMBER 2024 ISSUE. SUBSCRIBE OR DONATE TODAY TO HELP SUPPORT OUR NEWSPAPER.