In The Odoriba Legend, Ayaka Nakama researches legends in the dance history of the Kansai region. Since moving there in 2012, she has often been told by senior dancers and stage professionals around her about the exciting days of contemporary dance. They were simply reminiscences and boasts, but as an outsider dancer who had suddenly jumped into the world of contemporary dance in Kansai, she saw these storytelling moments as a place of inheritance.
How can unconventional contemporary dance be passed on? Unlike traditional performing arts or classical ballet, how is it possible to inherit and preserve contemporary dance that has no form? This performance considers and examines this possibility through the performance of works inspired by legendary stories, with the aim to expose the contours of the uncertain and unusual experience of dance and to create new legends as well.
A legend, like dance, is something uncertain or undefined, and Ayaka questions how oral legends change during their transmission by reviving them in this performance. As she believes that dance is like a supernatural phenomenon, she thought that her own works would be suitable to be passed down like an urban legend: a legend only becomes a legend if there is someone there to witness it and then pass it on.