Hiroyasu Sasaki

Hiroyasu Sasaki (佐々木博康) is a Japanese mime artist. He is often referred to as a master of the performance art and is the current head of the [http://www009.upp.so-net.ne.jp/Nihon-MIME/english.html Japan Mime Studio] and has worked for over 45 years to promote mime both in Japan and internationally.

Profile

Sasaki was born in Tokyo in 1939. He studied mime with Hironobu Oikawa and modern dance with Kazuo Ohno (co-founder of Japanese “butoh” performance) and in 1965 he went to Paris to study “corporeal mime” with its pioneer, Etienne Decroux, and “real mime” according to the Stanislavsky Method as taught by the distinguished Bella Reine. After returning to Japan he took over the Japan Mime Studio where he incorporated older more established movement based theatre forms of his country, such as Noh, Kyogen, Bunraku, Kabuki and Japanese traditional dance, into his work and teaching of mime.

Influence

Sasaki has worked to promote mime and train aspiring mime artists whilst continuing his own personal exploration of mime. He has performed around the world including Paris, Rome, Berlin, Greece, South Korea, Romania, the UK and regularly at his base in Tokyo. He has also performed on Japanese television alongside the legendary modern master of mime, Marcel Marceau.

Works

Sasaki creates expressions that suit the Japanese body and spirit based on corporal and realism mime. He makes works that draw on Japan’s lyrical folk traditions which keenly observe the beauty of the changing seasons, as well as more contemporary portraits, such as the Tokyo “salary man”. Sasaki’s performances are based on a highly crafted and masterful sense of emotional expression, gravity, tension and flexibility, breathing, the sense of space, rhythm, balance, timing, walking and a variety of characters.

Requiem

Requiem attempts to look at a troubled global world, continually repeating patterns of destruction and terror.