Entertainment Design: Emotion, Emotion, Emotion
Before its first show, the director of Varekai (Cirque de Soleil's latest
production) addressed the cast with what he said were the three most
important words for their performance: 'emotion, emotion, and again,
emotion'. Eiko Ishioka agrees: Everything depends on passion. She left
Japan for New York in 1980, and found that her book Eiko on Eiko had
opened for her a whole new world: entertainment design. She calls it
'exciting design'. Her work in this field includes films (Mishima, Closet
Land, Bram Stoker's Dracula), Broadway productions (David Copperfield's
Dreams and Nightmares, M'Butterfly), opera, Olympic athletes' costumes,
and now, circus art direction. In all she is successful.
Ishioka has been lucky enough to work in direct collaboration with great
talent, so each party has equal say. Only in this way can great work
be produced, she says. Her collaborators in all disciplines range from
Miles Davis and Irving Penn to Bjork to Francis Ford Coppola. "Titles
have no meaning in life," she says, "and after I finish a job,
when I wear whatever title the field has for me, I return to my title
of Eiko Ishioka." Her work has been called an actress, but she says
it is equally an athlete, a dancer, an acrobat, a singer. "The job
of all design," she concluded, "is to spark, to inspire, a
new performance." (MH)
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