Take any teenager nearly 10,000 km (6,000 miles) from home on their first-ever overseas trip and you are bound to reap wonder. For 16-year-old French ballerina Sylvie Guillem, who came to Tokyo with the Paris Opera Ballet School in 1981, that wonder grew into 30 years of mutual admiration.
"It was really exciting but very strange," Guillem tells The Japan Times. "Everything was to be discovered, to be looked at and studied. That first trip to Japan was the seed, but it kept growing; I wanted to know more, to see different things in Japan, to discover more about the culture and the people and the way they lived and thought."
Hope Japan marks Guillem's 40th tour of this country and reveals the growth of her 35 years in dance, which includes being named youngest etoile (star) at the Paris Opera Ballet before joining the Royal Ballet in London as a longtime guest principal. Her latest tour also features the world's best in choreography: from ballet's past to the contemporary now. Classical favorites from legends Kenneth MacMillan and Frederick Ashton are topped off with Guillem's most current ventures from the best in modern dance, William Forsythe's "Rearray" and "Ajo (Bye)" from Mats Ek.