is a Japanese

dancer Dance is a performing art form consisting of sequences of movement, either improvised or purposefully selected. This movement has aesthetic and often symbolic value. Dance can be categorized and described by its choreography, by its repertoire ...

and

actor An actor or actress is a person who portrays a character in a performance. The actor performs "in the flesh" in the traditional medium of the theatre or in modern media such as film, radio, and television. The analogous Greek term is (), l ...

Biography

Tanaka was trained in

ballet Ballet () is a type of performance dance that originated during the Italian Renaissance in the fifteenth century and later developed into a concert dance form in France and Russia. It has since become a widespread and highly technical form ...

and

modern dance Modern dance is a broad genre of western concert or theatrical dance which included dance styles such as ballet, folk, ethnic, religious, and social dancing; and primarily arose out of Europe and the United States in the late 19th and early 20th ...

, but in 1974, turned his back on these forms. He began his solo career with a series of nearly-naked primarily outdoor improvisational dances that took place throughout Japan, often dancing up to five times a day. For a time in the 1980s, he was associated with Hijikata Tatsumi and

butoh is a form of Japanese dance theatre that encompasses a diverse range of activities, techniques and motivations for dance, performance, or movement. Following World War II, butoh arose in 1959 through collaborations between its two key founde ...

, a loose genre of Japanese dance, but now has broken from that framework as well, and no longer uses that term to describe his dances. From 1986 to 2010, Tanaka hosted dance workshops based in

Body Weather Body may refer to: In science * Physical body, an object in physics that represents a large amount, has mass or takes up space * Body (biology), the physical material of an organism * Body plan, the physical features shared by a group of anim ...

, a movement ideology which "conceives of the body as a force of nature: omni-centered, anti-hierarchic, and acutely sensitive to external stimuli." In 1985, Tanaka and his colleagues founded Body Weather Farm, located four hours west of

Tokyo Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and List of cities in Japan, largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, ...

, where he taught summer sessions lasting four to five weeks in Japanese and English. Much of the training workshop students received was centered on the labor of workaday tasks, primarily in agriculture. Tanaka taught that performing such tasks in their environments and with their accompanying physical stimulations functioned as a dance student's teacher itself, overturning the tradition of the environment taking on a subordinate role to the dance student's technique.　He received the Chevalier of l'

ordre des Arts et des Lettres The ''Ordre des Arts et des Lettres'' (Order of Arts and Letters) is an order Order, ORDER or Orders may refer to: * Categorization, the process in which ideas and objects are recognized, differentiated, and understood * Heterarchy, a system ...

from the French government in 1989 or 1990. He continues to experiment with new ways to use the body, including drawing inspiration from farming. Starting in 2002, he began to appear in movies and on television. He won the award for best supporting actor at the

26th Japan Academy Film Prize The is the 26th edition of the ''Japan Academy Film Prize'', an award presented by the Nippon Academy-Sho Association to award excellence in filmmaking. It awarded the best films of 2002 and it took place on March 7, 2003 at the Grand Prince Hote ...

for ''

The Twilight Samurai ''The Twilight Samurai'' is a 2002 Japanese historical drama film co-written and directed by Yoji Yamada and starring Hiroyuki Sanada and Rie Miyazawa. Set in mid-19th century Japan, a few years before the Meiji Restoration, it follows the ...

''.

Filmography

Films

Television

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Tanaka, Min 1945 births Japanese male actors Japanese male dancers Living people People from Tokyo Male actors from Tokyo