P wave

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2024 / Goethe-Institut Tokyo, Shibuya PARCO

P wave takes its name from the initial seismic tremor that precedes an earthquake—an imperceptible yet decisive signal that the world has already begun to shift.

Rooted in Hara’s embodied experience of growing up in earthquake-prone Japan, the work repositions the body through choreographic practice as a site of receptivity to nonhuman forces: tectonic vibrations, atmospheric changes, and environmental instability.

In the context of the Anthropocene, where human-centric systems are increasingly inadequate in the face of planetary change, P wave asks what the theatre can still perceive and articulate. Departing from narrative and language, the work focuses on the body’s capacity to register premonitory signals—those too subtle to be grasped cognitively.

On stage, the performer’s body shares the space with nonhuman elements: the creak of the floor, shifting air, light, and sound. These agents become co-performers in a choreography of disturbance, where presence emerges not through representation but through resonance.

P wave proposes the theatre as a nonhuman sensorium—an apparatus through which we might begin to attune ourselves to a trembling world.