LADP PRESENTS: WALL—BODY
L.A. Dance Project
2245 E. Washington Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90021
Saturday, May 16, 2026 | 8:00PM
Sunday, May 17, 2026 | 7:00PM
Thursday, May 21, 2026 | 8:00PM
Friday, May 22, 2026 | 8:00PM
Tickets:
$35 | General Admission
$50 | Pay-It-Forward*
$26 | LADP Friend Membership Level (with code)
*Ticket revenue covers only a portion of what it takes to bring new work to life. Your added contribution helps close the gap between ticket income and the true cost of creating new work.
LADP Presents | WALL—BODY
WALL—BODY brings together choreographer Shu Kinouchi and designer Hiroshi Kaneko in a performance that examines how walls shape the body’s relationship to space. The work assembles inanimate objects into an ensemble in dialogue with Kinouchi’s solo choreography.
Twelve movable ten‑foot walls and a tower create shifting conditions that test the endurance of the body and its desire for change. The performance approaches the intimacies of shelter, division, obstruction, and transgression through gestures of vulnerability, resistance, and care. The work emerges from an extended exchange of drawings, dances, models, and conversations, bringing architecture and choreography into a shared creative process.
WALL—BODY invites audiences to consider how we navigate the structures that surround us.
WALL—BODY was developed and produced by L.A. Dance Project through its programming arm, LADP Presents, with funding from Charlene Achki‑Repko, Susan Baumgarten, Robert Braun & Joan Friedman, Susan Friedman, Jane Jelenko, Michael & Aliza Lesser, David Totheroh, and Sue Tsao.
INSIDE THE COLLABORATION
Over the past year, choreographer Shu Kinouchi and architect Hiroshi Kaneko have been building WALL—BODY through an intimate exchange of drawings, dances, models, and conversations. What began with a simple question — “Why walls?” — grew into a deep exploration of boundaries, vulnerability, support, and the ways bodies and structures shape one another. Read the Full Interview.
CALL + RESPONSE
WALL—BODY emerged through a dialogue between body and structure. Shu and Hiroshi traded words, movements, drawings, and models, each response reshaping the next. Over time, their exchange expanded across images, sounds, and materials, forming the foundation of the piece. This slideshow gathers a selection of those shared images, drawings, and gestures. The full collection is available to view here.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Shu Kinouchi is a Japanese dancer and choreographer whose work moves between performance, theater, and installation. Through choreographic installations, he uses objects, repetition, and spatial systems to explore support, intimacy, and human disconnection.
Based in Los Angeles, Kinouchi has performed with L.A. Dance Project since 2020, and previously with Houston Ballet and Tulsa Ballet. He trained at Hamburg Ballet School and the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School at American Ballet Theatre.
Alongside his performance career, he creates choreographic works that treat objects not as props but as partners, witnesses, or structures that shape behavior. His process often begins with extended physical research with materials such as chairs or walls, then develops through repetition, tableaux, and movement tasks into live performance environments.
His recent projects include Shu Loves Chairs, a solo work about support created in collaboration with Waka Waka, and WALL—BODY, a choreographic installation with architect Hiroshi Kaneko that examines how walls organize relationships through confrontation, enclosure, incarceration, and transgression. Across his work, Kinouchi studies longing, habit, and the quiet force of inanimate things, creating performances in which choreography becomes a way to observe the systems bodies live inside.
Hiroshi Kaneko is a designer, educator, and researcher whose work spans architecture, interiors, sets, and text. Hiroshi is a partner at KANEKOWINSTON, a design office based in Cambridge, Massachusetts that focuses on architecture, and is an instructor at the Syracuse University School of Architecture, where he teaches design studios exploring material construction, perception, and tectonics.
His interdisciplinary practice is grounded in drawing and model making as tools to examine how built environments shape—and are shaped by—the body.
His current projects include two renovation projects, in San Francisco and New York City, and a text on color, in addition to his ongoing collaboration with Shu Kinouchi on WALL—BODY and Shu Loves Chairs.
Image Credit: Hope Spears, 2025.