Marcos Morau’s new creation draws on Mishima Yukio’s The Temple of the Golden Pavilion and the structure of Japanese puppet theatre, Bunraku. The work brings dancers and puppets into a shared space where the boundary between life and artifice begins to dissolve. At the centre of Mishima’s novel lies a radical proposition: that beauty, pursued to its absolute limit, contains the seed of destruction. Morau focuses on the moment when the distinction between puppet and human blurs — when it becomes uncertain which body holds life, and which merely performs it.
On stage, dancers, actors, puppets and singers coexist as equal presences. At times, puppets appear animated; at others, humans take on an object-like stillness. Beauty and destruction, life and artifice, continuously exchange places.
Not a reconstruction of tradition, but a contemporary reconfiguration of its logic — a Bunraku for our time.

Direction & Choreography: Marcos Morau
Choreography Assistant: Ignacio Fizona
Dramaturg: Roberto Fratini
Music & Live Vocals: Maria Arnal
Set Design: Max Glaenzel
Costume Design: Silvia Delagneau
Japanese Traditional Dance Direction: Azuma Tokuyo (Nakamura Kazutarō), Hanayagi Genkurou
Takemoto-bushi Composition: Tsuruzawa Shinji
Performed by the Takemoto Ensemble
Rehearsal Director: Suzuki Ryu
Concept by Takano Taiju (Bunkamura)

Bunraku Puppeteers: Yoshida Tamasuke/Yoshida Minoshirō/Yoshida Tamanobu
Kabuki Actors: Nakamura Kazutarō/Onoe Maholo
Dancers: Suenaga Koh
Achille De Groeve/Ignacio Fizona/Zander Constant/Shaked Heller/Jeong Ik Jo/Pol Vázquez Burgos/Lorenzo Cimarelli