TMT Gear is Tokyo Metropolitan Theatre’s development program for emerging creators. In its music field, the project has brought together artists across genres to explore fundamental questions: What defines music? Where can new forms of expression be found?
Contrabassist FUSE Sakuhiko, whose wide-ranging practice encompasses criticism and producing, has undertaken a series of experiments throughout this project. In “Magatoki Experimental Rooftop”, a four-part video work, Fuse took Ikebukuro and Japan’s history—from the opening of the country to the postwar period—as his point of departure. Bringing together classical music, Japanese traditional performing arts such as Noh and *kodan* storytelling, military and anti-war songs, Japanese taiko music, Butoh, contemporary dance, small-theatre productions, and *shingeki* (modern Japanese theatre), he conducted an “experiment” in which these diverse elements overlap and intersect.

In the exhibition “Ikebukuro Non-Cron”, he engaged visitors in conversation as a form of performance. His research abroad also took him to theatres across different countries and historical periods, prompting him to reflect on the possibilities of arts and culture within the theatre.

This performance, “Sleeping Beauty KUGUTSU”, brings these experiments and investigations together. What will emerge from the chaotic coexistence of so many different elements? And what will audiences discover within it? The work pursues a form of beauty that is at once fundamental and new.