Cover Chisato Minamimura in ‘Scored in Silence’ (Photo: courtesy of Mark Pickthall)
Chisato Minamimura in ‘Scored in Silence’ (Photo: courtesy of Mark Pickthall)
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Chisato Minamimura’s solo performance in ‘Scored in Silence’ is a haunting presentation of World War II from an unheard perspective
In early August 1945, when the US dropped atomic bombs on Japan’s Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the explosion created an intense burst of energy followed by a massive shockwave, which produced an immensely powerful blast noise. But there were those in those cities who could not hear this sound. These deaf people could only see and feel was how the space around them got engulfed in blinding brightness and overwhelming heat, but could hear nothing.
It is this ordeal that London-based Japanese dancer and choreographer Chisato Minamimura—who is deaf herself and a British Sign Language user— depicts in a solo dance performance called Scored in Silence.
While Minamimura didn’t live through this experience herself, this tragic legacy is etched into the collective memory of generations of Japanese people. Years ago, when she travelled to Japan, she met a deaf woman who had survived the bombing. Touched by her story, she felt the urgency to document the first-hand experiences of these deaf victims before it’s lost to history forever. She interviewed around seven survivors in elderly homes. One of the survivors, who was a child then, shared that he screamed for his mother in terror when the bomb dropped, but couldn’t make a sound. “Everything was destroyed and turned to dust,” he said using sign language in the video interview, a part of which Minamimura has included in the promotional materials for her show
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Above Chisato Minamimura in “Scored in Silence” (Photo: courtesy of Mark Pickthall)
Chisato Minamimura in “Scored in Silence” (Photo: courtesy of Mark Pickthall)
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Some other survivors shared that they didn’t even know about the atom bombs because they couldn’t hear about it on the radio. It was only many years later, when there were exhibitions about the Second World War, that they found out what had actually happened.
As a dance artist, Minamimura was inspired to preserve this rarely showcased take on history through a method she knows best: dance. This resulted in Scored in Silence, which blends contemporary dance, her self-designed sign-mime, multisensory and digital elements. First shown in 2019 in Edinburgh, it will be staged in Hong Kong from March 7 to 10, as part of the No Limits arts festival before touring to other cities.
“My aim is only to report [about] the past: the events and how they affected the people. My message to the audience is simply a question of [what] we can learn from this past,” Minamimura says in an email interview with Tatler.
The stage arrangements of the show are the same for deaf and non-deaf audiences. “Every audience member has [same] access to the show,” she says, and adds that there are optional elements that the audience can choose to experience, such as wearing vibrating belts that translate the soundscape into vibrations, and audio description of the onstage movements.
Above Chisato Minamimura in “Scored in Silence” (Photo: courtesy of Mark Pickthall)
Chisato Minamimura in “Scored in Silence” (Photo: courtesy of Mark Pickthall)
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Minamimura’s dance movements blends mime with British Sign Language, and even members of the audience who aren’t familiar with sign language won’t have difficulties understanding the emotions she brings to the dance. For the show’s Hong Kong edition, the choreographer has even adopted Hong Kong Sign Language in it.
Reflecting on her career so far, Minamimura, who works with both deaf and other artists, says the main challenge has been to establish ways of meaningful communication between people who can and can’t hear. “I can only mitigate it through using sign language interpreters or hope for a world where everyone signs.”
But she also feels that in recent times, the arts world has been embracing greater diversity and inclusion. “The arts scene has an intrinsic opportunity to showcase the diversity there is in the world. When art moves us, we cannot extricate the art from the artist. We are simply moved by it. In this way, the art can create connections between individuals, communities and cultures. Through it, we learn that we are all different, yet inextricable.”
Chisato Minamimura answered in British Sign Language, which was translated by Lian Duan via email.
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Zabrina is the Senior Editor, Arts and Culture of Tatler Hong Kong. She specialises in performing arts, visual art and film. Her wanderlust was first fuelled by the Mighty Rovers Antarctica Expedition 2010. Over the years, she has interviewed A-list artists and filmmakers, including Oscar winners Chlóe Zhao and Tim Yip, Golden Horse winner Sylvia Chang, In the Mood for Love cinematographer Christopher Doyle, Pachinko author Min Jin Lee, and Coachella’s first Chinese solo singer Jackson Wang. She won gold at the WAN-IFRA Asian Media Awards for her 2021 feature on the waves of hate crimes targeting Asian Americans.
