Nobuko Tanaka is a stage writer who has regularly contributed contemporary theater and dance articles to The Japan Times since 2001. She also writes for several Japanese and overseas magazines and web sites. As a promoter, she takes Japanese artists to foreign theater festivals.
For Nobuko Tanaka's latest contributions to The Japan Times, see below:
Tetsuya Kumakawa speaks about his most recent project, "Cleopatra," in a way that's as grand as the Egyptian queen herself. "Nobody except me could have created this fantastic work," he tells The Japan Times. "I hope it remains a ballet classic for hundreds of years, ...
Contemporary dance seemed to enter the wider arts consciousness in Japan around the turn of the century, when there was a pronounced upsurge in the number of performances, festivals and competitions. Reflecting that rising enthusiasm, Takao Norikoshi published the encyclopedic "Contemporary Dance Thorough Guide" in ...
For casual fans of film, the name Martin McDonagh only became familiar after the movie he wrote, directed and produced, "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri," became the talk of this year's awards season. Actors Frances McDormand and Sam Rockwell both won Oscars for their performances ...
This hasn't been a great year for social media. Internet addiction has been a hot topic, as have privacy issues, and there has even been a movement to #DeleteFacebook. Last month, Satoshi Miyagi, artistic director of the Shizuoka Performing Arts Center, which runs World Theatre ...
When Akira Shirai first read the script for "Ballyturk," he quickly understood why its creator, Irish playwright Enda Walsh, said the work "should bypass the intellect and go straight into your bones." The 60-year-old artistic director at Kanagawa Arts Theatre in Yokohama was mulling over ...
There are mutual squeals of delight when Belgian dance artist Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and Spanish flamenco dancer Maria Pages are reunited after "far too long" at a Tokyo rehearsal studio. Pages, 54, has flown in from Madrid to promote the pair's 2009 work "Dunas" ("Dunes"), ...
Following a January press conference in which the New National Theatre, Tokyo, announced that Dairakudakan, one of the world's leading butoh companies, would be staging two performances of "Tsumi to Batsu" ("Crime and Punishment") in March, troupe founder Akaji Maro delivered a triumphant statement. "Having ...
In the world of Japanese contemporary drama, the action often takes place offstage as well as on. A case in point is what happened to Chiaki Soma, the program director at Festival/Tokyo from 2009-13, who is the main force behind the Theater Commons Tokyo festival, ...
Back in 1995, some of the movers and shakers of the domestic theater scene got together at various venues around the capital for an event called the Tokyo Performing Arts Market. The aim was simple: connect up-and-coming Japanese artists to the producers and theater ...
At the start of each year the New National Theatre Tokyo holds a media event at which the artistic directors of its three departments covering opera, drama and dance (ballet and contemporary) outline their aims and announce the upcoming programs. This time there was ...
