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Performing Arts 2023-24 Season

Performing Arts 2023-2024 Season

John Cage’s Japan + Japan’s Radicals

John Cage, the 20th-century’s most important avant-garde artist, said that Japan had been an important part of his life and influenced his ideas. However, New York City, Cage’s home ground, never had a concert focusing on the relationship between Cage and Japan. As Artistic Director Yoko Shioya said: If John Cage had not encountered Japanese culture, there would have been no John Cage! This gutsy statement was the thought behind Japan Society’s fall 2023 season, John Cage’s Japan, which we proudly presented 61 years after Cage’s first trip to Japan.

Borrowing Cage’s iconoclastic mindset, our spring 2024 season featured fearless works that defied conventional perspectives of iconic Western culture—Hamlet, Boléro, The Dying Swan and hip-hop. These icons were innovatively reimagined, redisplayed or dissected by various contemporary performing artists from Japan.

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This fall, Japan Society celebrated the pioneering Japanese spirit of the global avant-garde through a special season of symbiotic, genre-crossing programming.


2023-2024 Performing Arts Season Support

The season is made possible, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.

Major support is generously provided by Doug and Teresa Peterson; Howard Gilman Foundation; and Hisamitsu America, Inc. Endowment support is provided by the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Endowment Fund, The John and Miyoko Davey Endowment Fund, and the Endowment for the Performing Arts, established with a leadership gift from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation.

Additional support is provided by The Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels Foundation, Richard and Momona Royce, Nancy and Joe Walker, Dr. and Mrs. Carl F. Taeusch II, Dr. Jeanette C. Takamura, Estate of Alan M. Suhonen, and Friends of the Performing Arts. All Nippon Airways Co., Ltd. is the official airline of the Japan Society Performing Arts Program. Yamaha is the official piano provider of Japan Society.

Japan Society programs are made possible by leadership support from Booth Ferris Foundation and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.