Afternoon performance from Japanese improvisational movement group, contact Gonzo.

Founded in 2006, contact Gonzo is an improvisational performance group based in Osaka, Japan. The name Gonzo, which means eccentric or hooligan, is a reference to 1970s Gonzo Journalism in the United States, a style of writing that made no claims of objectivity and favored first-person narratives. The group, a collective of untrained dancers, has developed a specific mode of contact improvisation that borrows from sources ranging from martial arts to Internet trends. Based on both physical strength and agility, and trusting relationships within the group, contact Gonzo powerfully balances elements of contemporary dance, performance art, and urban and popular cultures.

“...it is possible to look at the body not as a medium for expressing emotions, but simply something to be seen as a series of physical phenomena. For us [contact Gonzo], we are not concerned with ‘internal/emotional’ reasons for our movement. It is merely a matter of [I moved because] ‘my body was pushed.’ Thinking in those terms, I believe you could say that the body is not a medium but an entity that, in itself, embodies philosophy. ... Our ‘contact’ is very unemotional. As an event it is on the same level as a plastic bottle falling over.”

We improvise all the performances. Basically we think after we start. We wait acting like stretching until we get an idea. In any case, once we bump into someone, a wave is automatically formed. The rule could be ‘not to punch someone in the face’, if we have any. We hope to have ‘a quick brain’ which can recognize the fact when something unexpected happens. I came across a question for myself, which might be summarized as ‘what is expected/unexpected" - Yuya Tsukahara