The Japanese performance-art group, formed in 1997, composes both video and live dance works. The group consists of eight members: Hitoshi Matsumura, Norihiro Sakamoto, Satoru Hirayama, Norihisa Nakama, Takashi Takagi, Yoshiyuki Hagihara, Iwao Katsumura and Satoru Mikami. Besides performing together, the eight write their own music and choreography, and create all the graphics, video props and costuming they use. Clad in uniforms and wearing steel boxes over their heads, the dancers move wordlessly to the sounds of electronically produced music. The performances bring surprise and lightness to the exploration of the anonymous, hermetic and repetitious aspects of contemporary existence. They have been shown at such prestigious venues as the Mori Art Museum’s Think Zone, and also in the mass media, as Grinder-Man cultivates a unique niche that bridges the gap between art and entertainment.
As Grinder-Man’s performances are always site-specific, troupe members spent much of their stay in Israel working ceaselessly to prepare Binary Rider for their two shows at The Lab (Hama’abada), the New Jerusalem Center for Performing Arts. After exploring Jerusalem itself, they focused on the performance space, where the audience would view the dance from three directions. Videos they filmed on site exposed the backstage of The Lab to the audience, thus making the hidden visible. The dancers also visited Tel Aviv, and participated in a traditional Passover Meal. From Israel they proceeded on to a European tour made possible through their invitation to the JCVA. Their post-tour talks in Yokohama highlighted their stay in Israel.
Binary Rider
Binary Rider uses technology and the metaphor of technology – in particular the metaphor of the binary code -- to study the impositions and limitations on our social existence. The digital world is evoked through the mechanical movements of dancers in black uniforms, performed against the backdrop of video and computer graphics projected on both the walls and the floor. Using unexpected elements such as Ping-Pong, which the dancers play with the audience, as well as hand drills and facial icons of smiles and frowns, the dance investigates the mass production of emotions, and the boundaries within social space. The music, many-layered costumes, lighting and graphics, all originally composed for this work, continuously revert to the seemingly simple code of 0 and 1. Symmetry vs. asymmetry, life vs. death, male vs. female are offered as examples of binary systems and pitted -- through graphics and more -- against the overwhelming and ever-multiplying quality of the information surrounding us. Our need to communicate with each other must somehow traverse past and through these hermetic systems; sometimes, the dance suggests, we succeed.
