Mount Fuji towers nearby, and the hills around are covered with beautiful tea fields, while occupying a huge, 21-hectare plot of greenery dotted with theaters and rehearsal spaces is the home base of Shizuoka Performing Arts Center.

In the words of the French-based, Cameroon-born dancer and choreographer Merlin Nyakam, though, SPAC is, quite simply, "A place for creating that great artists of the world dream of."

And the multitalented dancer and choreographer ought to know, because he's spent four years there on and off creating, with a group of Shizuoka Prefecture teens, the dance work "Takase's Dream" from its prototype titled "Yume Miru Chikara" ("Power to Dream") that debuted at SPAC in 2010.