A return to Japan after a tour in early 2023, and returning to collaborate and explore, and learn, to be with old friends and make new ones. Colin Herd and I, supported by the Sasakawa Foundation, have the chance to put events on, and perform, in Tokyo, Kyoto and Osaka, and do more than that, connecting with new people to build future things. A big travel, full of potential, but intense too, always, to go across the world. After a few days in Tokyo, and with the weather going rainstorm to boiling heat, we put on our first event at the Hazuki Hall house in Suginami, west Tokyo, co-curating with Sawaka Osaki and Corey Wakeling.

The venue is right on a park, and it was a hot sunday, full of people, in cherry blossom season, and this defined the aesthetic - the event was playful but charming, relaxed and communal. The audience were seated at two ends of this piano bar basement and we performed in the middle. Some brilliant new collaborative works, and the final three pairs were especially brilliant, Corey and Satomi Tanaka, Colin Herd and the co-originator of this whole project, Kyoko Yoshida, and then a sextet of poets musicians dancers.

The whole event can be seen here https://www.theenemiesproject.com/tokyo
And a blog by the venue on it’s happening. https://hazukihh.exblog.jp/30886834/

For my own part I got to work a pure improv trio with Miya and Yoshi Hogyaku, whom I’d worked with on my last trip, thanks to our mutual friend Benedict Taylor. Miya is a Flautist and Yoshi a poet. We fused these easily. I left via a window into the park, we named the animals in the room, I went under a piano and stole a coat, and in both languages, in the corners of the space, we made something I was privileged to be a part of, viewable below.