On Frantic Beauty
Jane Chin Davidson, “Dance that Searchs for Beauty and Fights For it”, Hypeallergic, May 14 2019
Marylnn Wei, “The Primordial Becoming of Ximena Garnica and Shige Moriya’s Frantic Beauty”, Huffington Post, September 16 2017
Ivan Talijancic, “Bodies on the Edge: Ximena Garnica and Shige Moriya’s Becoming Pentalogy”, Howlround, October 20, 2017
Carrie Lee O’Dell, “Frantic Beauty, BAM Fisher, NY” – ReviewsHub, September 18, 2017
Erin Bomboy, “IMPRESSIONS: LEIMAY’s Frantic Beauty at Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Fisher”, Dance Enthusiast, September 19, 2017
Leah Richards and John Ziegler, “What is Beauty?”, CultureCatch, September 19, 2017
Emily Cordes, “Frantic Beauty”, Theatre Is Easy, September 16, 2017
Marcina Zaccharia, “Exquisite Growth in “Frantic Beauty”, The Theatre Times, September 30, 2017
Jonathan Matthews “Performing Arts Dance: LEIMAY”, Eye on Dance, September 2017
On Becoming-Corpus
Carol Martin, Richard Schechner, “The Illumination of LEIMAY’s Becoming Corpus”, MIT Press Journals – TDR: The Drama Review Fall 2014, Vol. 58, No. 3 (T223), August 14, 2014. 169-174.
Christine Jowers, “ LEIMAY’S ‘Becoming-Corpus’ premieres at BAM FISHER Sept 12th-15th, 2013 (DanceUpCloseVideo)”, The Dance Enthusiast, August 30th, 2013.
Deirde Towers, “Impressions of: LEIMAY’s ‘Becoming-Corpus”, The Dance Enthusiast, September 22nd, 2013.
Brian Seibert, “Exploring Topography in Varied Skins and Tones: ‘Becoming-Corpus’ Includes Dance and an Art Installation”, The New York Times, September 13th, 2013.
Henry Baumgartner, “LEIMAY’s ‘Becoming-Corpus’ at BAM Fisher”, The New York Theater Wire, September 15th, 2013.
On Qualia-Holometaboly
Siobhan Burke, “Choose Your Own Rhythm: The BEAT Festival Returns to Brooklyn”, The New York Times, September 14th 2014.
On Thresholds
Erin Bomboy, “Impressions of: The BEAT Festival’s ‘Crossing Over’”, The Dance Enthusiast, September 22nd, 2014.
Franklin Mount, “Crossing Over: A Performance-Adventure in Greenwood Cemetery – Review”, Sensitive Skin Magazine, September 2014.
Siobhan Burke, “A Burial Ground Doubling as a Stage: ‘Crossing Over,’ a Performance in Green-Wood Cemetery”, The New York Times, September 15th, 2014.
Sarah Larson, “Alive in Green-Wood Cemetery”, The New Yorker, September 15th, 2014.
On Floating Point Waves
Amanda Keli, “Floating Point Waves: Leimay at HERE, NYC”, April 10th, 2012.
Susan Miyaki Hamaker, “Down Your Senses in ‘Floating Point Waves’”, JapanCulture-NYC, April 9th, 2012.
Cat Gilbert, “FLOATING POINT WAVES AT HERE”, The 22 Magazine, April 10th, 2012.
On A Timeless Kaidan
Henry Baumgartner, “The New York Butoh Festival Rides Again”, The New York Theater Wire”, November 8th, 2007.
Press Quotes
All
Press Quote
Citations
Ximena & Shige Works
Frantic Beauty
Correspondences
A Meal
Extinction Rituals
BECOMING - corpus
Thresholds
New York Butoh Festival
“Frantic Beauty is both alarming and compelling in the performers’ ability to bring opposing energies seamlessly together into one performance— they propel themselves in a continuous state of manic, almost violent energy, and then suddenly slow to a calm and pensive state. In one section, the dancers are crouched and motionless like Dali sculptures, with scattered moving black flecks of video projection traveling over their bare bodies like a massive crowd of ants. At either end of the energy spectrum, whether high or low, the sustained intensity of Frantic Beauty ushers the audience into a trancelike meditative state, leaving the … Continued
“Its visual resonance is immediate. The performers, writhing in the sand of their dusty chambers, reflect to the mask-wearing public a kind of horror laden with the imagery of contamination and confinement ubiquitous with the events of this year.” – George Kan, Brooklyn Rail (2020) for Correspondences
“At its heart, A Meal builds community around the act of eating; at the conclusion, you may find yourself hugging people who are no longer strangers and exchanging phone numbers. It’s not a passive experience; to get the most out of it, you need to become a participant, just like life itself.” –Mark Rifkin, (2024) for A Meal
“The Fishman Space, packed for this performance, was transformed into a communal seance. The emotional progression of this 75 minute work completes a circle, as the dancers offer a silent invitation to sequentially surrender, invert, reveal, confront, convulse, and center.” -Deirdre Towers, The Dance Enthusiast (2013)
“A flash of light on a darkened stage reveals a group of almost-naked people standing stock still, in silence. Then wiry lines of light slice through the darkness: one, another; soon a bunch of bright ribbons of light illuminate various slices of seven dancers. Are the dancers moving, and even growing and shrinking before our eyes? No, this is only an illusion produced by Shige Moriya’s deft hand with the projector. “ -Henry Baumgartner, New York Theatre Wire (2013)
“And occasionally, around one bend or another, a poignant surprise awaited, foreshadowed by a distant noise or beckoning pool of light. In the first 15 minutes of the almost two-hour tour, after we had stopped at a mass grave of victims from the 1876 Brooklyn Theater fire, a shrill voice sounded, directing our attention to six bodies perched on a row of mausoleums, each lit from below. In seemingly random order, they began to fall backward and stand back up, to disappear and reappear, thanks to the simple but effective lighting. This was “Thresholds” by Leimay (directed by Ximena Garnica … Continued
“Everyone snaps to attention; Thresholds created by Ximena Garnica and Shige Moriya of LEIMAY, reminds us that the pall of death hangs over this place. A few paces later, we congregate in a circular pit as an opera singer intones an eerie, dire melody. Spotlights flash on, five of them, illuminating men and women standing on mausoleums. They are like paper doll cutouts, arms pasted to their sides, expressions stony. One pitches backwards, and then another and another as the lights blink off and on. Under the cover of darkness, these dancers scramble into standing positions to repeat their death … Continued
“Continuing, we soon encounter a ghostly body hanging from a tree in a net. Further along, we see a line of white clad figures standing above a row of crypts set in the hillside. Looking up, we observe them standing upright, facing us, then falling back, then standing up, then falling back, over and over, to beautiful and disturbing electronic music backing opera singing. It’s a subtle reminder that we’re all going the way of the people buried here.” -Franklin Mount, Sensitive Skin (2014)
“The most notable exception to the problem of dance divorced from its environment was a kinetic installation by Leimay (a company directed by Ximena Garnica and Shige Moriya) in the grand Beaux-Arts Court. Four towering, delicate tents of iridescent white string, suspended from the high ceiling, each housed one statuesque, slow-moving dancer in white. A line reached from each performer’s back to the peak of his or her tent, so that any sudden motion — frog-like jumps, abrupt collapsing — caused the structure to pulsate or quake: the body an extension of its habitat, and vice versa.” -Siobhan Burke, The New … Continued
“Leimay…created an immersive world of captivating videos, simple set pieces that produced bizarre visual effects, and evocative music” “Floating Point Waves worked as an exploration of the intersection of human and electronic images with organic and electronic sounds, and the creativity that can come from inventive interactions with the simplest design elements.” -Amanda Keil, backtrack (2012)
“CAVE fluctuates between being our home, our studio, the LEIMAY Ensemble studio, and a space for other artists; the private interweaves with the public, the personal with the social, and sometimes all of those spaces exist simultaneously. For some people, CAVE was a gallery, for others a center of butoh, for others the studio of the LEIMAY Ensemble, and for others an artist’s loft where they slept while staying or living in New York. From the beginning, CAVE has been a vortex defying categories. Live arts such as performance art, dance, experimental sound, and music were intermingled with photography, painting, … Continued
“The work of this artistic duo has been vital to the contemporary development of butoh in New York…They have played a pivotal role as curators and community builders, and now as artists who are forging their own path, inspired by those they have encountered along the way.” “The New York Butoh Festival galvanized a new hub for butoh in the United States…With the 2003 New York Butoh Festival, New York was once again established as a beacon for butoh.” -Tanya Calamoneri, Routledge Advances in Theatre & Performance Studies (2024)
“…Correspondences’ more-than-human choreographies exposes the trans-corporeal exchanges that both structure and biologically alter the performers.” “Correspondences as a case study to argue that if we are to persist through the ‘horrors of the Anthropocence,’ we must not only stay with the trouble, but move through the trouble.” –Angenette Spalink, Performing SLSA: A Roundtable on Performance Studies and the Field’s Dispersions (2024)
“Through the example of LEIMAY’s Becoming Series stillness is theorized as revolt. It is a performative act – a radical form of action confronting the viewer as a body with agency.” “LEIMAY’s Becoming Series manifest political commitment established in its reflexive dynamics that empower subjects in their stillness.” “…the audience is absorbed by and enveloped in the enduring, exquisite, and grotesque stillness – we witness the body trigger will, memory, history, anxiety, and responsibility. The audience is invited to “become” together…” “Through the mixture of voices, sounds, light textures, and choreography of high physicality, “Borders” seeks to shrink the gap … Continued
“They offer a splendid merging/clashing of movement and light in patterns that approach and recede. Garnica and Moriya have been artistic and personal partners for 13 years. Their intimacy shows in the way that Garnica’s choreography is structured, framed, and permeated by Moriya’s lighting and Moriya’s light is populated and articulated by Garnica’s extraordinary choreography. The integration of movement and light makes Moriya’s changing visual design the eighth performer onstage.” “The work is about the interplay of the spectators’ perception and imagination with these seven bodies gaining presence in the light and losing substance in the dark, not about tricks … Continued
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