Event
Whenever Wherever Festival 2026
alter ‘narrative’ & living space(s)
January 28th (Wed), 2026 – February 8th (Sun), 2026
The Right Eye, Intersecting Delicacy, Blue Flame Sphere, Bones and Straight Line(-ing)
Date: January 28th (Wed) – 31st (Sat), 2026 [5 performances over 4 days]
Co-organized by: Keio University Art Center (KUAC)
Supported by: The Saison Foundation
Address: 2-15-45 Mita, Minato-ku, Keio University Mita Campus South Building 3F Roof Terrace
Roller Skating de DANCE DANCE DANCE! Season 2
Date: January 31st (Sat), 2026
Address: 4-6-7 Minami-Azabu, Minato-ku, Tokyo
living space(s)
Date: February 7th (Sat) – 8th (Sun) 2026 [2 days]
Address: 3-15-4 Shibaura, Minato-ku, Tokyo
Staff
–
Curators: Aokid, Satsuki Mei, Nishimura Mina, Yamazaki Kota
Production: Iwanaka Kanako, Hayashi Keiichi
Sound (2/7-8): Saito Umeo
Scenography (2/7-8): Okoma Go
Festival jingle: Tsuchiya Satsuki
Documentary photography and video: Maezawa Hideto, Kato Kazuya
Graphic design: Matsumoto Naoki
Website: Nakamura Yasuyuki
Cooperation: Take
Organized by: Body Arts Laboratory
Supported by: The Minato City Sports, Interaction, Culture and Health Foundation (the Kiss Port Foundation), Arts Council Tokyo (Creation Grant [Single Year] Creative activities), Saison Foundation (Yamazaki Kota New Play and Dance Performance)
Contact
Email: wheneverwherever.2020@gmail.com
Artist
The Ex-Noguchi Room
Performance: Ishikawa Asahi, Nat Frederickson, Nishimura Mina, Motegi Miyu
Azabu Kids to Teens Hall
Special guest DJ: Nishizawa Kento
Instructors: Anayama Kana, Nakayashiki Minami, Nishimoto Kengo, Matsumoto Nanako
SHIBAURA HOUSE
Concept
alter ‘narrative’ & living space(s)
Living space(s) emerges here and now in this place shared simultaneously by multiple events
Whenever Wherever Festival (WWFes) is an experimental dance/performance festival run by an artist collective centered around dancers and choreographers. Celebrating its twelfth edition, WWFes2026 is held under the theme “alter ‘narrative’ & living space(s)” at venues including public spaces, community spaces, and ward-run facilities in Minato Ward, Tokyo.
WWFes2026 will focus on a new perspective of “narrative”—“alter ‘narrative’”—and the implementation of an art project as “living space(s).” Narratives possess the power to bind communities and regions together. And yet, is it not the technique and manner of storytelling (narratives) that significantly affects their transmission and formation? Rather than focusing on comprehensive and compelling “strong” narratives, we turn our attention to the multiplicity of peripheralized narratives, to distinct individual narratives and a state in which fragments produced by various temporalities within them are reflected and loosely intersect. Conceiving as an alter ‘narrative’—and foregrounding through this project—the subtle changes arising through the interplay between these spaces and the events within them, this theme seeks to explore the nature of place and forms of collectivity in urban space.
The two-day event “living space(s)” at SHIBAURA HOUSE features programs by open-call participants and invited artists that are jointly planned with the organizers, comprising workshops, lectures, performances, and other activities that occur simultaneously and spontaneously. It attempts to create a space in which multiple events coexist in a non-hierarchical manner, where people from diverse backgrounds unconsciously intermingle and influence one another, transcending the boundaries between audience and non-audience, and professionals and amateurs.
Notes for living space(s)
Mina Nishimura
Living space(s) emerges here and now in this place shared simultaneously by multiple events. As one occupies this space analogous to a market, various sounds catch one’s ear, blending with the soft background music and radio broadcasts. The subtle nuances of someone’s emotions, fragments of thought, even the lingering traces of presence slip into one’s consciousness in an irregular rhythm.
Here, no one can grasp everything, nor is there any need to. In one corner, a crowd of people might be exchanging countless words, while in an adjacent space there might be nothing happening—or so it seems (or perhaps it is precisely in such places that “unplanned events” are accumulating…?!). Moments missed, time that slipped away, conversations not heard, movements not caught: these absences, too, form part of the experience of listening to the multiple reverberations emerging in this place, here and now.
Even though each person may be hearing a different kind of sonic “musijack,” our bodies can still appear to move in sync—a state that may feel somewhat strange but also quite enjoyable. What flows in the space(s) is not so much a musical “hijack” with irregular undulations resembling Ornette Coleman, tightly bound by an alter ‘narrative.’ Rather, it is something groundless and ethereal, like the humming of a neighbor you hear for the first time and cannot stop thinking about. It slips into the gaps in your body, catching you off guard when you are alone, but vanishes before you can share it with anyone else. And yet, you also relax a little, and before long, you find yourself humming that strange tune—catching someone else off guard in turn. . . .
Oh, I see. It would be wonderful if some mysterious humming—the kind that makes everyone hum along without thinking—were to linger in this living space(s).
Maybe we could even call it an alter ‘narrative’. Would that be okay?
Probably. Just about. Right now, probably, it’s just about perfect.
What is WWFes?
Launched in Tokyo in 2009, WWFes is a performing arts festival run by a collective of dance artists. Its program is characterized by a questioning of the very environments in which artists create, with emphasis on the creative process and experimental approaches. The festival also operates through a curatorial system that involves a wide range of artists, and celebrates its twelfth edition in February 2026.
Since 2021, WWFes has been held across multiple venues in Minato Ward in Tokyo including theaters, alternative spaces, and public spaces, under the theme of “place” in its broadest sense. Within this framework, the festival has focused on the concept of rahen (“aroundness”), a keyword that refers to the unique environment formed around a place, accompanied by perception and memory, as the body traverses it. The theme “alter ‘narrative’ & living space(s)” explored at WWFes2026 continues this line of inquiry.
Translated by Jaime Humphrey