The name of the late great Pina Bausch's acclaimed Tanztheater in the German city of Wuppertal may translate as "Dancetheater," but its works often owe more to abstract emotional action and snatched dialogue than to dance. Over in London, meanwhile, Simon McBurney's Complicite company has long been at the cutting edge of physical theater — so much so that its works have profoundly influenced the nation's erstwhile style of speech-focused drama oft-ridiculed for its "actors who only move from the neck up."
The world created by Shuji Onodera is akin to these exponents of performing arts whose work defies being categorized as either dance, theater or, indeed, dance-theater.
After training at the Mime Institute of Japan, in 1995 Onodera formed the award-winning mime-based company Performance Theater Mizuto Abura (Performance Theater Water and Oil), which was active at home and abroad until he disbanded it in 2006. Then, in 2008, he started Company Derashinera, whose ever-expanding range of works combines mime, contemporary dance, ballet, butoh, acting and more.