Live Performance
And the Twins Return is a meditation on bewitchment and calamity, deception and possession, inspired by images from Northern Japan and Southern Mexico. When a fox attaches itself to you, it dunks you into a dream world, controls your thoughts, alters your behavior. The fox is a fickle trickster who brings fortune one day and misfortune the next. We attempt to go backwards in time to find something intact, something old. But there are few clues, so we turn to the unconscious, giving space for flow. Strip away and listen to what our decolonized selves might sound like.
And the Twins Return was created during a Japan-US Friendship Commission Artist Fellowship in Japan and is influenced by ritual dance practices and yokai (a class of supernatural spirit-monsters in Japanese folklore).
FILM
NAKA collaborated with filmmaker Jody Stillwater / Lenape Creative Group to create a film version of And the Twins Return during the COVID-19 pandemic. The film premiered at ODC Theater’s Online Theater Festival in June 2021.
Special thanks to the Japan-US Friendship Commission, Yukimi Chibana / Ballet Contempora Square in Ginowan, Okinawa; Shoichi Chibana, Jubilith Moore, and Kathleen Hermesdorf / FRESH Festival.
Performed at ODC Theater’s Online Theater Festival (2021), Fresh Festival, Joe Goode Annex, San Francisco (2019)
Created and performed by José Ome Navarrete Mazatl and Debby Kajiyama.
Sculptural Costume/Set Elements by José Ome Navarrete Mazatl
Lighting for Live Performance by GG Torres
Film Director: Jody Stillwater
Cinematographer: Michael Epple
Producer/Assistant Director: Sebastian Galasso
Producer/Additional Wardrobe: Tiare Ribeaux
Production Assistance: Hannah Moore & Mena Stillwater
Production Management / Lighting Design: José Maria Francos
Photography: Robbie Sweeny