UNIT SOUZOU’s TaikoWorks 2018
August 25, 2018, 3:00pm
Lan Su Chinese Garden, 239 NW Everett Street, Portland, OR 97209

We are excited to work with our esteemed partners at Lan Su Chinese Garden to present TaikoWorks 2018. Unit Souzou’s annual showcase will pick up where it started. This second rendition will continue the tradition of creating and exploring work specific to this unique performance site.

With our team of performers and creators, Unit Souzou will explore and transform the traditions and histories embedded in Lan Su Garden. Behind its gates, this city block-sized garden boasts beautiful landscapes and architectural elements, providing space for community gathering and individual reflection.

Lan Su Chinese Garden

TaikoWorks will reframe the unique characteristics of the garden, delighting the senses, pushing taiko and dance performance through inventive and unexpected ways. Audiences will discover new perspectives to access and experience the space, as the performance journeys out and about, location to location within the garden.

The entire Unit Souzou company will perform including Co-Directors Michelle Fujii and Toru Watanabe, our Professional Ensemble and our Community Group. The annual TaikoWorks showcase is an opportunity to celebrate and share Unit Souzou’s most current ruminations of both finished and unfinished work. We are excited to premiere a new collaborative work by Ian, Vicky, Toru and Michelle: Converging Rivers. Inspired by the image of the tributaries flowing into the Willamette River, and eventually flowing into the mighty Columbia River, this new piece explores independent voices converging as part of a holistic larger body, individual histories converging into a larger human story.

We love to create new work, but we can’t do it without community support. Your contribution will allow Unit Souzou to fully embrace and realize the creation of TaikoWorks 2018. We hope you will join us on this journey!