A collaboration between the Tokyo-based Butoh dancer/martial artist Takahiro Tomatsu, and the acclaimed London-based experimental music ensemble ARCO, led by composer performer Neil Luck.

In troubled times of impossibly complex problems, radical perspectives are required to imagine equally impossible solutions. Drawing on Anglo-Japanese folk entanglements, the hypnosis of late-night TV, dream journals, and other nocturnal elements, this performance combines the daring physicality of Martial-Butoh with the eerie underside of experimental music.

Imaginary Solutions sets out to fashion strange new tools for strange new futures… 

Takahiro Tomatsu is an acclaimed Butoh dancer and marital artist based in Tokyo, Japan.
His performances range from solo dance works, to complex and immersive performance installations, to long term collaborations with leading avant-garde musicians. Notable highlights include winning the grand prize at the Tokyo Experimental Festival (2010), and performing as a part of a project with major international artist Takeshi Murakami.

He has frequently collaborated with major musicians and groups including projects with the Ensemble Modern Academy, and a long term dance-music duo partnership with legendary free-jazz pianist Yosuke Yamashita.
His recent documentary collaboration with filmmaker Kenta Tsujimura has received wide appreciation in Japan

Neil Luck is a composer, performer and director based in London. His work takes a range of forms from music-theatre, to concert works, radio, public projects and recordings. He is the founder and director of the music-theatre ensemble ARCO, and a co-founder of artist cooperative squib-box. Independently, he has also worked with and written for people and ensembles in the UK and abroad, and presented work at music venues, festivals and galleries internationally including the ICA, Whitechapel Gallery, MATA Festival (NYC), Tate Britain, Tate Modern, BBC Proms, Palais de Tokyo (Paris), The Barbican, LCMF, in Vilnius and Aarhus Capital of Culture festivals, and the Tokyo Experimental Festival. He is currently a fellow of the Akademie Schloss Solitude, Germany.

ARCO is an experimental music-theatre company, based in London, making new work for diverse contexts and audiences.
Directed by Neil Luck, ARCO is comprised of musicians and artists from a range of disciplines and backgrounds. The group explores alternative approaches to live performance practice as a starting point for creating sound and music-orientated spectacles. They are particularly interested in collaborations with artists from alternative disciplines, and so have and have worked with Pro wrestlers, children’s TV presenters, Death Metal bands, Butoh artists, filmmakers, Morris dancers, Pop singers, virtual avatars, the ghosts of Romantic composers, and “the public” on many occasions.