Thursday, Oct. 18, 2012

Almost the whole of Kentaro's life has been devoted to dance in particular to hip-hop dance ever since he first saw it on television as an elementary school boy.

Even today, as a well-known professional dancer who prefers not to reveal his surname and calls himself simply KENTARO!!, he recalls the TV show that changed his life Dance Koshien, a nationwide street-dance contest for high school students that ran from 1988-1996. In 1996, Kentaro won the second prize, and his career began to take off.

That first success came after Kentaro, who was born in Sendai but grew up in Tokyo, went to one of the capital's very few modern dance studios, when he was small. In a recent interview, the 31-year-old said of that period, "I really hated school because, basically, I didn't like studying. So, really, I was rescued by dance, and every day I practiced dance steps under my desk during the lessons."

After his TV success, Kentaro survived in show business by occasionally acting in movies and TV shows, while also singing in a band. Meanwhile, though, he was becoming so prominent on the dance scene that his schedule eventually filled with teaching dance classes, solo performances and performances as the leader of the dance troupe Tokyo Electrock Stairs (TES), which he founded in 2008.

This year, since returning in March from a tour in India, Kentaro has been busy with regular dance shows and preparing for this month's hectic schedule, which included the Dance Triennale Tokyo and a rerun of his solo work "Ame ga Furuto Hareru 2" ("Clear after Rain 2") in Tokyo. After Tokyo, he'll take the show to Kyoto. On top of all that, he's set to raise a ruckus with a flash-mob dance event he's planning for Festival Tokyo next month, after which, to kick off 2013, he will take off for a dance showcase being presented by the Japan Society in New York.

As we chatted at a Tokyo burger restaurant, Kentaro talked about his love of hip-hop, while making a frantic appeal about the current situation of contemporary dance in Japan.

It's remarkable that in your teens you were already choreographing original works. What was your inspiration back then and now?

I wasn't interested in jobs like dancing in Disneyland parades or in the background of TV variety shows. Primarily, I love to create, so I'd always choreograph and create performances with friends, even when I was the youngest in a group.

What inspires me is my technical quest in dance, so I normally create works to make the most of some great new movement I've come up with. I know many performers, especially in Europe, incorporate a social or political dimension in their works, but I think there's already lots of that kind of conceptual stuff around, so I don't need to do it, too. Having said that, I may not think the same way when I turn 40 who knows?

See the rest here:
Kentaro makes hip-hop personal