TWILIGHT TAP Award-Wining Dance Performance
For this year Nari Japan Fest Summer edition, we have a very special guest, the extremely talented artist Masaki Murata aka MURATAP. We’ve been inspired by him and his work with TIMEEMIT back through the years, and was fortunate enough to collaborate with him in Kakegawa last fall. Last year he won the “Best Dance” Award at the Adelaide Fringe Festival, the second largest performance arts festival in the world. When we found out he was performing at the would famous Festival Off’ Avignon (as our friend put it the Cannes of performance art), we were crossing our fingers that he could fit a trip to Helsinki into his schedule. And we’re ecstatic to say, even through Finnair strikes, Murata-san will be joining us to perform his Solo Show “Twilight Tap” at the historically magical Villa Eläintarha.
We’ve developed a full program to commemorate Murata-san’s performance! Twilight Tap to us represents the beauty of Modern Japanese performance art, and to pair with it we’ll be opening the event with something a bit more Traditional – a special English version of Rakugo the traditional Japanese theatrical art. After the Rakugo performance, the group will move outside for a beautiful garden tea session, to gently transition into Murata-san’s main event.
Agenda
14:00-14:15 Entrance & Welcome tea
14:15-14:45 Opening – Traditional Rakugo(English) by Takahiro Okabe
14:45-15:15 Garden Tea time
15:15-16:00 Dance Performance
PS: there is a limited capacity due to the historical attribute of the Villa site, please reserve in advance.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Masaki Murata
Tap dancer / artist
He began street dancing in high school. At the age of 24, he encountered tap dance in his hometown of Sendai and began training under Masaru Sato. He later moved to Tokyo to study with Kazunori Kumagai. From 2006 to 2017, he was an active member of Kaz Tap Company. Since then, he has been performing as a solo tap dancer.
Currently, he collaborates with artists from various genres, including contemporary dance, theater, and visual arts. At the same time, he continues to develop solo works rooted in tap dance, drawing inspiration from fragments of daily life. Through imaginative expression and interdisciplinary approaches, he creates a unique and personal world on stage.
He received the Award for Excellence in the Solo Category at the SAI Dance Festival 2019 and has been invited multiple times to perform internationally through the Fukuoka Dance Fringe Festival. He is also a certified artist of the 19th “Heaven Artist” program by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government.
In 2024, he won the Adelaide Fringe Weekly Award – Best Dance at the Adelaide Fringe Festival, and received the Best Show 2024 award at the Newcastle Fringe Festival.
https://www.muratamasaki.com