I took Responding to Ko as a research moment for myself in which Ko Murobushi is a field, a bath that can feed this research.
I considered his 40 years of dances, teaching sessions, interviews, readings, as mentors, ressources that I could refer to during those last months. My memories of what we shared in the Centre National de danse contemporaine in Angers-that I was directing- as he came to teach or perform, was also a ressource.

I also had in mind the journey that we planed to do both in Vietnam and Japan as mutual presentation of countries, landscapes, bodies, sensitive experiences that had shaped us strongly.
The impressive editing of those 40 years of work made by Watanabe-san, in periods such as the 70’s, 80’s, 90’s,2000’s of Murobushi artistical life, made me counscious that some movements, musics, issues remain present during the whole life.
They seem to guide Murobushi to be able to enter, each time they occur, in new territories.
In this big amont of informations, I choose the sound of those traces to manifest both the encounteer with Ko and my own personnal actual issues such as the mourning of my father, the end of my own childhood as a protection and the fact of beeing myself a mother. On stage, this encounter takes the form of a travel.

Café Shy, the archive place opened by Watanabe and Buoy theater
run by Kako Kishimoto offered a powerful and exceptional synergy between reflecting and dancing. The 17 conferences of searchers about the wide and wild field of so-called- Butoh, the 5 post talks, the 4 film screenings, the 10 performances of the invited choreographers, bring to visibility the fact that the work of an artist, deeply committed in transmission as Murobushi was, is producing knowledge, emotions and strong support for other art works and researchers.
Today,after this strong artistic experience, I am in the desir of proposing an european anchor to this platform that could keep vivid Murobushi as a ressource for artists and searchers.
Emmanuelle Huynh