Wearing a pure white hakama (wide-legged pants worn over a kimono), a young Japanese woman appears on stage in the glass-covered atrium of the Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA) in Cleveland, Ohio.

She bows to the audience, turns to the gilded folding screen that is still blank and touches it gently, then sits down cross-legged and bows deeply to the screen three times.

Miwa Komatsu sits cross-legged in front of a gilded folding screen on a stage at the Cleveland Museum of Art on May 11. | TATSUYA AZUMA
Miwa Komatsu sits cross-legged in front of a gilded folding screen on a stage at the Cleveland Museum of Art on May 11. | TATSUYA AZUMA