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Megumi Eda
Ballet
Biography:
Megumi Eda was born in Nagano, Japan and had her professional debut with the Matsuyama Ballet Company at age 14 in Tokyo where she appeared in many of the ballet classics in repertoire. After appearing successfully in the Prix de Lausanne Competition, she was invited to the Hamburg Ballet School and for the next 15 years, as a member of the Hamburg Ballet, the Dutch National Balletand the Rambert Dance Company, she worked with many choreographers including John Neumeier, Christopher Bruce, Jiri Kylian, Lindsey Kemp, William Forsythe, Hans van Manen, Twyla Tharp and David Dawson. In 2004, she moved to New York as a founding member of Armitage Gone! Dance and has continued a close collaboration with Karole Armitage to this day. In addition to her work with Armitage she has begun to incorporate other art forms including sculpture and video into her own installations and performances. In New York, she has developed her passion as a video editor and a director. She has been collaborating with Yoshiko Chuma since 2014 as a Performer/Filmmaker. She won a Bessie Award (NYC Dance & Performance Awards) in 2004. Megumi was named one of Dance Magazine’s BEST PERFORMERS 2015. Since 2018 she has lived in Berlin. While continuing her creative activities, as soon as after the Coronavirus hit in Berlin, she has run an online dance class called “Punk Mom Ballet”: a class for non- professionals and professionals alike. Also, Megumi has taught classes and workshops to dance companies including the Matthew Bourne Company, Armitage Gone! Dance, Matsuyama Ballet, and the Peridance Center. She has also taught pre-professional dance students and college students at Interlochen, Princeton, Harvard, Goucher College, and many more.Class Description:
Throughout her dance career, Megumi has always started from a ballet core, but has been influenced by contemporary dance, pop, native dance styles, Japanese traditional dance, Gaga and improvisation. Working within a traditional ballet structure, Megumi uses elements from different dance styles and also knowledge gained from injury and experience to explore new approaches to the use of the body on both a physical and mental level. In traditional ballet practice, a dancer is often told to look at the mirror and learn the shape from the outside, Megumi focuses more on how energy flowing in the body merges into space. It is also the study of finding how to use our bones correctly to allow the muscles to function effortlessly and efficiently, avoiding unnecessary fatigue and overuse.This is a practical technical class, not just a theory lesson. The ultimate goal of this study is to appreciate function as beauty. For example, Megumi starts from the principle that beauty happens when our legs and feet work articulately, instead of striving for an external image of beauty. She believes this is how an authentic feeling of freedom in movement is developed.