Hanadayori Night in Ho Chi Minh City

Message from Shoso Shimbo, PhD

9 September 2023

Thank you for coming to our performance tonight. 

This was a very challenging experience for me. I had to work with a new site, new materials, & new staff. I know the site, materials and staff are all great, but I was still anxious. All I could do was to do my best to actualise my new design. 

According to Japanese mythology, when the heavenly gods created Japan, they were so impressed with the living energy of the reeds in the wet lands that they decided to send their descendants to introduce rice farming and rule the nation. 

The god met a beautiful princess, konohananosakuyahime, in Kyushu, and they got married and their descendants became Japanese emperors. Sakihana, one of the Hanadayori perfumes comes from the name of this princess.    

I often wish I could express a living energy that would impress the heavenly gods in my work. I hope that my work this time has a small part of that sort of energy. 

I would like to thank so many people who made it possible to realise this special event. 

First, Yen and her team worked so hard for me. They were so kind and efficient. I feel so grateful that they have made this a very special event for me. 

Hanadayori was a small part of the Wa Melbourne Ikebana Festival. It asked ikebana artists around the world to create an ikebana work according to the request chosen for them. It aimed to promote ikebana and our ikebana festival. But Metascent became a sponsor of the Wa Melbourne Ikebana Festival and Yen took our Hanadayori project to the next level. 

To support the Wa Melbourne Ikebana Festival, Metascent has created a new set of perfumes inspired by Japanese culture. We are so excited with this collaboration. We hope many of you will appreciate the hanadayori perfumes and that you will have a chance to visit or exhibit at the  Wa Melbourne Ikebana Festival in September 2024. 

I am also grateful to Mr Duc Tri and his musicians. It is a great honour to be able to work with such talented and highly regarded musicians. 

Thank you also my flower sponsor, Dalat Hasfarm. Their high quality flowers were crucial for my work today. Thank you very much.

I am also thankful to the Gem centre and its team. It is great to show my work on such a world class stage. Thank you very much. 

https://www.shoso.com.au 

https://www.facebook.com/ikebanaaustralia

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Ikebana Performance with Paul Grabowsky - Review

10 September 2022

Melbourne Recital Centre

Review by Lili Tu

Mum spent 7 years to learn Ikebana from Dr Shoso Shimbo so I have seen many of his stunning arrangements. However, only last night I witnessed his true magic as he created a beautiful Ikebana arrangement to improvised music by pianist Paul Grabowsky.

It’s a breathtaking performance!

Shoso started the show by taking us up to the mountain in late winter when the snow began to melt using beautiful snowball viburnum, waxflowers, drift woods and pine branches. Then slowly he made the pink buds appear and blossom by blossom the spring began. Hundreds of cherry blossom branches were brought into Primrose Potter Salon to recreate the scene of the alpine in early spring. The flowers, music and light transported us to the outdoor with the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold - when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade. We seriously got goosebumps watching the weather transform with Shoso’s arrangement.

Finally, the colours of spring came to the brightest with the pink oriental lilies in full bloom. We seemed to skip a breath or two when Paul Grabowsky played his final notes and the completed arrangement came to live. It’s an experience that you would never known if just seeing the final arrangement.

Wa Melbourne Ikebana Festival is still on today at Abbotsford Convent, highly recommend to come by to enjoy a lovely Spring Sunday there!

https://www.shoso.com.au 

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Ikebana Performance with Paul Grabowsky - Book Now

Ikebana Performance: Book Now

Ikebana Dinner Show, Ikebana Conference, Ikebana Workshops, Ikebana Demonstration, and more: https://www.ikebanafestival.com/book-tickets

Enjoy free Ikebana Exhibition & Ikebana Container Award exhibition (Biennale) at Abbotsford Convent on 10 & 11 September. Melbourne Ikebana Festival 

https://www.shoso.com.au 

https://www.facebook.com/ikebanaaustralia

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Ikebana Performance with Paul Grabowsky

Tickets will be on sale from 3 June 2022.  https://www.ikebanafestival.com

In the 16^th century, a seminal ikebana artist Senno Ikenobo raised the idea that Ikebana should be created based on the essence of flowers rather than their image. The aim is to represent the essence of the universe, which Shoso calls Wa: Fluid Harmony in his performance. Ikebana in this sense is abstract assemblage rather than floral decoration.           

Some contemporary artists used performance to show that the artist’s creative act is equally as important as the artwork itself. Ikebana performance similarly aims to shift attention from the artwork to the artist’s action. Art exists in real space and real time and Grabowsky’s music becomes part of the materials as Shoso brings the piece together. The emerging work is a dynamic matrix, an interplay of symmetries and asymmetries in harmony with the music. 

This performance is presented by Melbourne Ikebana Festival.  

https://www.shoso.com.au 

https://www.facebook.com/ikebanaaustralia

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Ikebana Performance with Paul Grabowsky

Postponed to Saturday 10 September 2022: The Details

Ikebana Performance & Contemporary Art

Shoso Shimbo

Ikebana. One of the most important premises in the modernist art movements was to depict objects as they really are rather than the way we see them. Cubism and Abstract Art were early attempts to create a new order in the twentieth-century art.

A similar but more meditative view was expressed in Senno Kuden (1542), one of the early texts on ikebana. Senno stated that ikebana should be created based on “omokage” of such materials as flowers and leaves. Omokage is not the image we see but is more the conceptual essence of the materials. Just like some Cubist artists moved their focus from visual representation to conceptual representation, ikebana artists move beyond the visual aspect of the flowers and seek to grasp their essence through meditation.

Senno also said that ikebana as a product represents “onozukara naru sugata”, the essence of the universe. Just like Abstract Art can be seen to represent virtues such as order, purity, simplicity and spirituality, ikebana stands for essence of the universe, which I call Wa: Fluid Harmony in my performance. Ikebana in this sense is abstract assemblage rather than floral decoration.

Ikebana Performance. Inspired by Abstract Expressionism, artists such as Georges Mathieu and Kazoo Shiraga used performance to show that the artist’s creative act is equally important to the artwork produced.

Ikebana performance similarly aims to shift attention from the final piece of art to the artist’s actions. However, the process of creation is not based on a fixed plan. Art exists in real space and real time and Grabowsky’s music becomes part of the materials as Shoso brings the piece together. The live music constantly transforms the whole composition of the work. Such transformation shares an aspect of chess that fascinated both Marcel Duchamp and Lewis Carroll. The emerging work is a dynamic matrix, an interplay of symmetries and asymmetries in harmony with the music.

https://www.shoso.com.au
https://www.facebook.com/ikebanaaustralia

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Ikebana Performance for Product Launch

30 October 2019: Roku Gin Suntory Product Launch, Ocean 12, Crown Hotel. Shoso presented an ikebana performance with assistance from Shoan Lo. 

https://www.shoso.com.au
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Ikebana Performance

The Way of the Flower: Stillness in a World Gone Mad

Shoso Shimbo presented Ikebana performance with Ann Norman (Shakuhachi)  and Brandon Lee (Koto) as part of Matsudo Week.

When: 8pm, Friday 6 May 2016

Where: Box Hill Community Arts Centre, 470 Station St, Box Hill, Victoria 

Ikebana means "to bring flowers to life". Flowers in the fields are alive and in harmony with nature, but once they are cut, separated from nature, they are dying biologically as well as symbolically. Ikebana artists’ job is to give the dying flowers new life. This can't be achieved by simply copying nature. Through a wholistic engagement with the flower, the Ikebana practitioner tries to access the essential life force of the flowers on many levels, physically, psychologically and spiritually. This collaborative process with nature is always thrilling and healing. In this performance I would like to share with the audience the meditative process of creating the work as much as the end product. 

http://www.shoso.com.au 
https://www.facebook.com/ikebanaaustralia

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