Composer: Isao Matsushita
Performers: Tokyo Novyi Art Theatre (Japan) and Studio for New Music
Conductor — Honoured Artist of Russia Igor Dronov

A separate day of the festival (5 April) will be devoted to Japanese culture. The programme includes the presentation of a new translation from Ad Marginem Press, a public talk on Japanese culture, literature and theatre with art historians and theatre scholars, and a concert and staged performance by the Tokyo Novyi Art Theatre and Studio for New Music. All the events are brought together under the title “Sakari Oikumene”, in which the Japanese word “sakari” points to the culmination of the life cycle, its full bloom, and resonates with the Greek “acme”.
Within the Japanese programme, Studio for New Music and Tokyo Novyi Art will present “Rondo of Unrequited Love” (composer – Isao Matsushita), a spectacle for symphony orchestra and dramatic theatre. The production is based on the story of Yumemakura Baku, told in his novel “Onmyōji” (“The Diviner”) and inspired by the Noh play “Kanawa”. The main character of the book is the legendary hero Abe no Seimei – a physician, diviner and master of the occult teaching of onmyōdō. Isao Matsushita’s spectacle also tells of his adventures. It is a story about the nature of magic and the world of Japanese spirits, where man-eating demons exist alongside shape-shifting maidens who suffer from unrequited love.