Like many others in Japan’s rising performing-artist generation, 34-year-old Ney Hasegawa says he first felt the lure of the stage when he went to see shōgekijō (small-scale youth theater) plays while he was in high school. After that, he started taking an interest in dance, too, and when he formed his company Fujiyamaannette in 2003, his clear aim was to blur the boundaries by creating unique and highly visual dance-theater programs.

Nowadays, the Tokyo native smiles wryly with confusion when he's described as a "dance artist," maintaining that he simply makes theater without words — not dance programs.

Speaking ahead of the Tokyo Performing Arts Meeting festival in Yokohama, where he is presenting a double bill of new works, he explained, "I went to Berlin a few times to see theater, and I found that if it was a good production it was quite possible to enjoy it without knowing any of the words.