Art Union Humanscape (AUH) duo, Ayako Kato (dance) & Jason Roebke (double bass) creates a sonic and kinetic landscape meditatively superimposed with silence and stillness. Their ritualistic performance is grounded on experimental performance and the aesthetics of furyu, Japanese for “wind flow,” as it relates to cyclical transformation, human motion in nature, and cosmic ephemera. The duo deliberately construct radical transgression and the web of non-linear tensegrity (tension and integration) for the audience members to travel through their own imaginative journeys. As if the repetitive patterns in nature form fractal spontaneously under the principles, the AUH's sound and movement energetic waves slowly engulf space-time and the audience members, making the intangible into the tangible. In resonance with their own memories and experiences, the audience members envision and experience their being through new layers of perspectives and awareness.
Ayako Kato
Ayako Kato is a dance artist originally from Japan. She has collaborated with more than 60 musician-composers, and toured in the US, Japan, and Europe. Working on dance as the art of being, she received residencies at Montalvo Arts Center in Saratoga, CA and Camargo Foundation in France through 3Arts; Best of Dance from the Chicago Tribune and SeeChicagoDance; fellowships from the High Concept Labs and Links Hall; a 3Arts Award, a Meier Achievement Award, and a Chicago Dancemakers Forum Lab Artist Award.
Jason Roebke
Jason Roebke is a bassist and composer who tours widely in the US and Europe. In addition to playing bass in Chicago’s most compelling jazz groups such as Mike Reed Flesh & Bone and Tomeka Reid Quartet, he has composed music for his own Octet and groups. His playing is intensely physical, audacious, and sparse. The Chicago Reader called his work as “a carefully orchestrated rummage through a hardware store.” He is a recipient of Illinois Arts Council Fellowship in Music Composition.