Part of a series of interviews with current and past Rubys grantees. Interested in learning more about the Rubys Artist Project Grant program? Go here.
- Grantee: Naoko Maeshiba
- Grant Year: 2015
- Grant Discipline: Performing Arts
Naoko Maeshiba is a performer/choreographer/director. With body’s expression at the core, she creates shared experiences that affects people’s perception and releases their imagination. Rooted in the minimalism of traditional and contemporary Japanese theatre as well as improvisation and surrealist art, Maeshiba’s work pursues truth in abstraction through the interplay of kinetic, auditory, and sculptural elements revealing the obscured and ephemeral moments in life. Maeshiba’s Rubys supported project, Subject/Object, will take place over four days at Baltimore Theatre Project. Learn more and buy tickets here.
GBCA: How long have you lived in Baltimore and what brought you here?
Naoko: I have lived in Baltimore for 13 years. I moved here to take a teaching job at Towson University.
GBCA: How would you define the type of performance that you do?
Naoko: My performance doesn’t seem to fit into any single category or label. It is physical, visual, and sensorial. It is a continuously enfolding phenomenon. There exist only immediate moments and connection to them.
GBCA: What sort of experience would the audience have at Subject/Object?
Naoko: Remembering. Sensing. Feeling. Sharing. I hope my subject can meet their subjects.
GBCA: What is next for you after Subject/Object?
In the long-term - Continuing the work discovered through the process of Subject/Object.
In the short-term - Performing a solo dance in collaboration with a Bulgarian designer Venelin Shurelov at Varna Summer International Theatre Festival in early June.
The Rubys Artist Project Grants were conceived and initiated with start-up funding from the Robert W. Deutsch Foundation and are a program of the Greater Baltimore Cultural Alliance.
