TODOME Da Fox (Noe Iwai)

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I am a multidisciplinary artist, choreographer and researcher, working across performance, poetry, storytelling, painting, sound and theatre-making. I often perform with a 'Fox Mask', an essential medium for my work and the signifier of the animal 'Fox' which represents both Japanese and British cultures.

I moved from Japan to the UK with my mother and older sister when I was four years old.  I became interested in history and story-telling as I began to feel a discrepancy between the history I had learned from her grandparents and the history I was taught at school. Brought up and educated in Japan until the age of 15, I returned to England again after finishing junior high school. Since then I have been UK based, becoming a resident in 2022.

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The experience of life in the West as a Japanese female is an integral part of my work. Within this, traditional gestures and cultural rituals of various countries mirror my multicultural heritage and upbringing, as well as my interpersonal and emotive narratives. These relationships centering on care and respect for family and friends in Japan and in England are ongoing veins of research in my work, as a connection to the broader cultural past.  I also focus on the importance of notions of equality, inclusivity, and openness. I, therefore, emphasise the exclusive characteristics of Kabuki which is a Japanese traditional theatre performance which dominated by male. For example, in my performance of 'Fox Rain’ (2017), I questioned the exclusivity of Kabuki by creating a group performance referring to elements of Kabuki, but without sexual or racial boundaries. The choreography was also inspired by Butoh, a more modern (post-war) genre of Japanese dance performance to express the griff and struggle or each individuals.

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Work

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My practice is a dialogue between politics, humanity, and poetics. I challenge culture, tradition, and manners and they are often expressed through revelry and humorous expression. I utilise performance as my medium to interact with mythology, natural materials, sound work, poetry, and painting; all using theatrical methods that could also be interpreted as installations. 

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The desire to embody the fox and harness their capricious nature has offered me a totemic methodology and vehicle to provoke people’s awareness towards socio-political issues, Whether the foxes are shallow or prudent, supportive or revengeful to humans, can never be answered— but their actions, remnants, and traces of spirituality leave people to wonder. And it is through this space of doubt that I hope to explore lost narratives and relations between nature and humans, as well as the way of thinking about nature, Without wishing to essentialize, my experience in the West has witnessed a manifestation of fear of nature that absolutizes the subject, while in Japan, people tend to co-exist with nature and relativizes it. Hostility does not factor into this equation. 

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I am therefore deeply interested in recreating the ‘foxes’ trickery’ by performing in the open air - most of her performances take place in nature with minimal additions of man-made objects. Restricted sites such as theatres, churches, or houses, are therefore avoided in my performance work. 

Japanese Buddhist interpretations and the sanctification and spiritualization of objects are also part of Japan's great culture, a country where yokai (monsters), ghosts, and incarnations have long been familiar to the public.

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Despite the predominantly Japanese expression in my work that seems to leave afterimages in my and my viewer’s mind, I am greatly inspired by British comedy and theatre, particularly how these performances effectively shift between the humorous moment to serious scenes.