Reina Takeuchi

0:00-0:09 Solo from choreographic development of MASKED, directed by Meryl Tankard supported by FORM Dance Projects

0:09-0:24 Excerpt from Australian jazz band Delay 45's short film FLUX

0:24-0:48 Documentation of MCA Late performance entitled Holding Lightness, commissioned by the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney

0:48-1:23 Solo from CLAMBAKE, an immersive theatre performance choreographed by Natasha Sturgis

1:23-1:44 Solo from self-choreographed performance Infinite Recollections for the QUT Visual Arts Graduate exhibition

1:44-3:18 Lead Dancer in masked costuming | The Consumerist Spectacle choreographed by Vicki Van Hout for Sydney Dance Company's Pre-Professional Year 2019

3:18-4:59 Documentation of improvisatory performance with Australian jazz band Delay 45 for their launch of FLUX

Reina Takeuchi solo from Ghosts Between Streams (2023) at Australia Chamber Orchestra Pier ⅔

Byroven - original music composed by Byron Mark, inspired by the first movement of Beethoven's 'SONATA IN F' Opus 10 No. 2

- from Byron's album 'ODYSSEY'

Dancer & choreographer: Reina Takeuchi

List of works in compilation:

1. Solo performance response to Anthem ARI’s exhibition “OLD HAUNTS” at the Walls Gallery (Gold Coast)

2. Solo from development period of “MASKED”, directed by Meryl Tankard, supported by Form Dance Projects 

3. Footage from Delay 45’s music video FLUX: I’ll Come To The Next One

4. Performance as part of Museum of Contemporary Art’s Late Program “Holding Lightness,” performed with Billy Keohavong & Jeremy Santos 

5. Footage from “HOLDING LIGHTNESS” for Performance Space’s Liveworks Festival as part of LIVE DREAMS: ISLAND

Lucia Tường Vy Nguyễn and Reina Takeuchi, Shadow, 2022. Video, sound, 7.52 minutes.

Soundscore: Jackson Garcia

Additional playing: Amy Zhang

Video editor: Reina Takeuchi

Assistant editor: Tom Kentta

Reina Takeuchi and Lucia Tường Vy Nguyễn alternate between their inner monologues and mother tongues in performance video work Shadow. Pulling together their physical practices – boxing and dancing – into a dialogue, the artists embody “shadow” as both an act (verb), and an object (noun). Takeuchi dances and Nguyễn shadow boxes; their bodies mirroring, brushing, and holding each other with the intimacy of a shadow tied to one’s self. 

The physical rituals of dancing and boxing have become ways for Takeuchi and Nguyễn to escape, meditate, and fill the gaps that are left when language does not suffice, or their fluency as diaspora falters. The ways in which the artists train their bodies evoke a voice (of breath work, clothes rustling, feet padding) by which they may fill the silences in empirical archives that have made spectres of Asian women’s bodies. By choreographing and composing voice recordings of themselves, their mothers, and objects from the archive of their friendship, Takeuchi and Nguyễn speak to what makes them whole. In Shadow the artists re-appropriate movement and memory as a corrective practice; attempting to mend the rips in their self-understanding.

I’LL COME TO THE NEXT ONE for Delay 45’s FLUX, 2021

Shot on Awabakal and Worimi land between lockdowns one and two in New South Wales, Australia. An interdisciplinary collaboration exploring flow, the beauty of the sublime and the push and pull of human emotion through a cross section of dance, music and film.

Music Artist: Delay 45

Director: Monisha Chippada

Cinematography / edit: Jack Single

Choreographer / dancer: Reina Takeuchi

Production assistants: Zoe Dixon, Charles Sundborn & Raya Tolentino