“During these moments of uncertainty, I feel I am very much challenged and encouraged to practice letting go. Yet, it almost equals with gaining new perspectives and hope, making even some small changes by following the new wind of ethos within and around myself.” -Ayako Kato
To the Shore: ETHOS Episode I
Episode II & III
This year, I have been planning to present Inception: ETHOS Episode II through the Night Out in the Parks. Due to the current unprecedented condition, I am waiting to catch the right timing and the way to offer Episode II while I am preparing and rehearsing to make a preview video at the beach. As Tagore’s poem recited by Tuli Bera both in Bengali and English during the Episode I suggests, I haven't seen the face of new ethos, but we are starting to hear the voice and the footsteps. Until the third Final Episode of ETHOS is realized, I hope to be able to recognize or recall the face of our (new) ethical values on lives and nature. Valuing the beauty of being of all the existence on the earth, ETHOS keeps seeking the actualization of nature-multicultural-centrism or, more simply, multi-centrism through a holistic bird's eye view.
Why ETHOS
My artistic practice involves music and dance improvisation and compositional work which I may take five years to complete. I also create choreographic work all in between. I launched the ETHOS trilogy project in 2018. I envisioned this ambitious theme after my father passed away in 2014. He named my elder sisters and me as the child of pathos, Kanako, the child of logos, Riko, and the child of ethos, Ayako. I guess I subconsciously wanted to figure out what ethos means, does, and how it is working through me and others in the society while I still have energy in my body. During the creative process, as a female of color originally from the far east who has been practicing dance, I could encounter the conscious recognition that I myself and even my ancestors have been gone through a long world history of westernization/Euro-centrism and human-centrism. Even I noticed recently that I must have been unconsciously working on the decolonization of the body and mind since I dropped my focus on classical ballet practice 30 years ago. Yet at the same time, respecting the fact that we are all different beings, I also want to keep seeing what we have in common.
