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Robot Love

I’m in the audience of the Pit to watch Kaori Ito’s solo performance, “Robot, l'amour éternel.” It’s in the blackbox performing space at the New National Theatre Tokyo, intimate and close. The stage is an open, raised platform,  gauzy white fabric covering the floor.

 

Performance

Kaori Ito: “Robot, l'amour éternel” 

Place

New National Theatre Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan, December 5, 2025

Words

Kris Kosaka

Kaori Ito in “Robot, l'amour éternel.” Photograph by Akihito Abe

The lights drop suddenly. Unseen, a melancholic piano plays as the lights rise again on the gauzy-draped stage. Only now the airy material seems to breathe. The breath becomes waves, writhing folds of fabric that resolve into a human form before suddenly disappearing again. Gradually, plastic body parts are revealed onstage—a collarbone plate, a shin or a forearm. 

Our first clear sight of Ito herself are her legs. They jut upwards, grotesquely angled out of one of four boxes cut into the floor of the stage, accompanied by the transformative clatter of the piano keys. 

It’s an eerie, beautiful beginning, incongruously fun. The work premiered in 2018, the last in Ito’s autobiographical dance theatre trilogy. She first danced with her sculptor father and then her life partner; for this performance, Ito dances alone. This final segment uses her own life as a busy artist and new mother to explore the universal search for authenticity and meaning. 

Kaori Ito in “Robot, l'amour éternel.” Photograph by Akihito Abe

Kaori Ito in “Robot, l'amour éternel.” Photograph by Akihito Abe

Ito the dancer portrays Ito an android, learning human movement for the first time. It’s not as edgy or dark as it sounds, despite the litter of body parts. Cleverly staged, at turns vulnerable and playful, Ito wrote, directed and choreographed the production, imbuing the whole with a sense of wry contemplation and awareness. Closely influenced by modern concepts of tanztheatre, the performance is both whimsical and profound. 

Her choreography creates an illusion of spontaneity. Ito is the android, reacting to the world anew. Her physicality emerges, simultaneously strong and weak, always compelling to watch. When Ito finally dances freely, exploring all the possibilities of movement, it is a gorgeously realized moment of dance theatre.  

Her movements too subvert expectations, despite the occasional frenzied, staccato jerking you expect from an android. Partly it's Ito’s witty soundtracking; after the piano, most of her actions are accompanied by an automated voice, reading her own diary entries scattered roughly across approximately a year in her life, from 2016 near the birth of her son. There’s other musical interludes, like a lively techno tune or a ballad, humorously celebrating solitude. Yet nothing feels scripted or planned. 

Kaori Ito in “Robot, l'amour éternel.” Photograph by Akihito Abe

Kaori Ito in “Robot, l'amour éternel.” Photograph by Akihito Abe

The one hour performance kept me enthralled throughout, and the observations and rhetorical questions from her diary are witty and insightful. Near the end, Ito once again subverts expectations, breaking out of character unexpectedly. All in all, she successfully transforms the unconventionality of an artist’s life, constantly touring and rushing through space, to reflect the universal human search for meaning throughout our brief moment here, from birth to death. 

A Japanese national based in France, Ito was named the first Japanese director of the Centre Dramatique National de Strasbourg-Grand-Est in 2023. Trained in classical ballet growing up in Japan, Ito also studied the modern techniques of dancers like Martha Graham and Merce Cunningham in New York as a young woman, before returning later to the States with a grant from the Japanese government to study at the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. Throughout her dance career, Ito performed for innovative contemporary choreographers such as Philippe Decouflé, Angelin Preljocaj and James Thierrée, before turning to choreography herself. Her work is captivating and authentic. Catch it if you can. 

Kris Kosaka


Kris Kosaka is a writer and educator based in Kamakura, Japan. A lifelong ballet fan and studio rat in her youth, she's been contributing to the Japan Times since 2009. She writes across culture, but especially in dance, opera and literature. 

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