Seeking Shadows

[Location] Rich Mix, Shoreditch, London, UK

[Medium] Dance Theatre / Live Performance

[Role] Performer / Ensemble

[Link] https://www.knakajima.com/projects/seekinh-shadows

[Direction] Ken Nakajima

[About]

Seeking Shadows (2024) is a dance theatre work directed by Ken Nakajima and premiered at Rich Mix, London — one of East London's leading cultural institutions, supported by Arts Council England.

The piece draws from the daily routines of Japanese salarymen — wake up, work, sleep, repeat — and peels back what lives underneath that rhythm. As an ensemble member, I move through states that oscillate between mechanical repetition and sudden, raw exposure. The choreography by Donna Kim asks us to embody the invisible weight of overwork and inherited masculine expectation, not as commentary but as sensation. You feel it in the body before you can name it.

What stays with me about this work is how it holds the Pan-Asian lived experience without reducing it. The shadows in the title are not metaphors — they are the parts of ourselves that survive in the dark, visible only when the light shifts. The performance challenges the audience to look at those parts, in themselves and in the people beside them.