‘Until the Monster Returns’ is a work that researches the physical and psychological response to large environmental disruption, reflecting a lived experience of the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami in Japan. Using reimagined debris, this work focuses on how our bodies absorb and adapt to environmental displacement in its aftermath. The movement language in this work experiments with the materiality of domestic objects through the lens of Japanese architecture and Wabi-sabi, accepting imperfection and impermanence.
Individual’s imagination redirects a community’s recovery journey, towards repurposing materials than only to repair them back into its original shape, impacting our physicality when interacting with our surroundings. Taking example from the 2011 disaster abandoned with mountains of debris, each of these objects were once designed with purpose and holds a memory of functionality. Vice versa, its tactile experience keeps an archive in individual bodies. So intuitively, items were repurposed by mindful debris disposal method from care, attentiveness and integrity.
Australian landscape experiences recurring natural disaster and near miss, but we often withdraw from unprepared crisis and deflect underlying fear. Despite the brutal relationship between nature’s raw power and our fate in survival, how do we accept the transience of life in conflict with emotional attachment to the past? Since Postwar Japan, the endless fear of disaster is often symbolised in films as an immortal monster frequently returning to destroy Japanese landscape. Such as its themes, this work enhances the distinctive perspective and embodiment of Japanese coping mechanism practice, into a movement style that builds resilience against external chaos.
About the Artist
Rena Sangawa is a dance artist, born in Japan and currently based in Australia. Led by existentialism and Japanese philosophy integrating diverse intellectual tradition, she finds passion in creating works that question authenticity in digitalised lived experience.
She recently trained with ImPacT program at ImPulsTanz Vienna International Dance Festival and b12 Berlin Workshop Festival, and following secondment with Legs On The Wall, she was a Leg Up member in 2025 which supported the initial development of her new choreographic research series in progress ‘Reclaiming Home’.