OZ Arts Presents Hiroaki Umeda’s assimilating and Moving State 1
Presented by OZ Arts Nashville, assimilating and Moving State 1 is an immersive multimedia work conceived and led by Japanese choreographer, visual artist, and sound designer Hiroaki Umeda. Integrating dance choreography with video projection and an electronically produced soundscape, the program transforms the stage cum projection screen into a field of morphing images, sound, and dance. Rather than positioning movement apart from its surroundings, the featured pieces merge body and technology into a single evolving landscape, inviting audiences to experience performance as a heightened exploration of perception, space, and human presence within a digitally saturated world.
Umeda’s work is grounded in the idea that choreography does not stand apart from its sensory environment; instead, movement, projected image, and sound are built as a single, interlocking system. Nothing feels decorative or secondary. The dancers’ gestures seem to trigger ripples of light, while low electro-sonic vibrations press against the body like an unseen current. Experiencing it, I had the sense that no element could exist alone; each pulse of sound and flash of projection subtly recalibrated how I perceived the role and position of technology and performers’ physical effort and control alike.
The opening piece Moving State 1 featured four dancers from Umeda’s initiative called Somatic Field Project (dancers: Takara Nakamura, Yuki Nakamura, Ikumi Otsuka, and You Suzuki) whose gorgeous dance execution reflected the movement language developed my Umeda. The project functions as an extension of Umeda’s research into physical precision, training performers to embody extreme control, speed, and clarity in movement within his concept of how to integrate dance, light, and sound.
Moving State 1 begins with a single diagonal line across the white projection screen-dance surface, extending from the vertical backdrop onto the floor. Because the projection wraps over the 90-degree angle where the back wall meets the ground, the image of the slanted line fractures at that seam. The line remains continuous, yet its angle shifts slightly as it crosses the crease, producing a refracted effect that foregrounds the stage’s architecture rather than concealing it. What might otherwise read as a clean geometric gesture complicates the performance space, creating a quiet but persistent spatial tension.
On either side of this bent diagonal, the light and shadows divide the field into contrasting zones; one luminous, and the other densely saturated. Within these opposing planes, circular forms emerge and transform by expanding, contracting, multiplying, and dissolving. Their contrasting fields seem structural rather than ornamental. The circles interact with the refracted line and the dancers’ bodies simultaneously, flattening and deepening the space. Umeda’s choreography suggested that the dancers might be “amorphous organisms, expressing their behavior through dance.” Their bodies clustered before dispersing while pulsing and recalibrating as if governed by the shifting geometric projection and shifting wave frequencies of the sound design.
Umeda’s sound design for Moving State 1 operates with the same precision as the images and choreography. There is no melody or tonal anchor, only calibrated frequencies released in controlled durations and intensities. Sub-bass vibrations seem to travel through the floor and into the audiences’ chest cavities, while sharper, higher frequencies register closer to their jaw, inner ears, and temples. As the waveform shapes were engineered to expand, compress, and shift, the physical points of resonance moved around within the listeners’ bodies. Further, the experience for us was more physiological than it was interpretive. Our eyes tracked how the dancers’ movements interacted with the fractured geometrical shaded fields, while our ears registered the changing bands of wave frequencies. Audiences’ bodies absorbed both; in this integrated field of projection, movement, and vibration, we became implicated into the performance itself rather than only acting as mere observers. Major kudos to the dancers of the Somatic Field Project—I cannot begin to describe how stunning their performance was.
Umeda’s assimilating features him as the soloist. Where the visual projection of Moving State 1 relied on stark geometry—lines, planes, and defined shapes—assimilating replaces that structural clarity with a digitally choreographed field of moving particles. The projection resembles clusters of tiny water bubbles or thin suds drifting across a liquid surface. Instead of cutting across space, the little bubbles accumulate, gathering in imperfect circular formations that feel organic rather than architectural. These circular patterns swell as smaller bubbles bind together, expanding outward in rippling formations before loosening into a kind of controlled diffusion. The motion carries a sense of internal logic: clustering, dispersing, recalibrating. Then, without warning, the surface ruptures. The clustered forms scatter abruptly, fragmenting into erratic motion before freezing in suspended stillness. The effect is both fluid and volatile—graceful chaos interrupted by sudden arrest—transforming the projection into something that feels alive, unstable, and constantly on the verge of reconfiguration.
Umeda’s choreography in assimilating feels directly responsive to the behavior of the movement of the bubbles, as though the body and the digital images are engaged in an ongoing exchange, or, his movements dynamically shift depending on how the visual field of swirling bubbles behave. When the clustered forms tighten and concentrate, Umeda’s body contracts; his joints stiffen, his limbs isolate, and his gestures become contained. His articulation is precise and segmented, almost mechanical, as if he is resisting pressure from an external force. As the bubbly clusters loosen into swirling, circular drifts, his movement correspondingly opens. He releases his spine, lengthens his movements, and his body begins travels more fluidly through space. Then, when the projected forms scatter abruptly or surge into chaotic dispersal, Umeda’s physicality expands in scale; his arms sweep wider, and his movements are more erratic and destabilized
What makes the relationship complex is that the direction of influence is never entirely clear. At times, Umeda’s gestures seem to initiate change in the projection’s patterns and movement, as if a sudden contraction of his torso triggers a tightening of the circular bubble cluster. In other instances, the projection appears to lead how his body reacts a fraction of a second later as if it is his body’s kinetic response, absorbing a shift. There are also passages where the two move in such close alignment that the sense of cause-and-effect dissolve entirely; Umeda and the visual field are one. As the artist’s note says, “I aim to create a phenomenon where space becomes the body and the body becomes space….”
Similarly to Moving State 1, the sound design of assimilating intensifies the sense of immersion by its creation of fluctuating frequencies rather than employing conventional musical accompaniment. assimilating’s sound design uses fine, high-frequency wave textures, granular static, and these intermittent surges of low-end vibration that abruptly circulate through the performance space, causing the audience to experience similar sonically invoked bodily sensations. At other times the sound was so thin, creating a near-silent hiss. The shifts in assimilating’s sound design are abrupt and deliberate, and combined with the visual and dance elements were so incredibly immersive for the audience—two thumbs up.
Last, I encourage anyone to follow OZ Arts Nashville and take advantage of all it has to offer. Their venue is an experience all on its own. Oz is a real creative and cultural space where guests can relax and mingle before and after performances. Much of the space also serves as an art museum and the staff is welcoming and friendly. Visit OZ Arts Nashville’s website for future showings at https://www.ozartsnashville.org.
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A Georgia native, Stephen D. Turner moved to Nashville in 2023 with his partner of over thirteen years. When he isn’t hiking in the woods or enjoying the ocean, Stephen is a musicologist and tubist who teaches music at Tennessee State University.
This sounds really fascinating – I’m always interested in how different mediums can combine to create a truly immersive experience.