I wanted to rethink what diversity is. And if possible to have this discussion before Tokyo’s 2020 Olympics and Paralympics and expand it by having a dialogue with people from different contexts, rather than members of similar genres. I saw True Colors ACADEMY (How To Use The Body) as an opportunity to bring together the different worlds with the adult entertainer Toda Makoto, doctor Inaba Toshiro, and myself as a dancer.

We focused the True Colors ACADEMY (How To Use The Body) workshop to actually moving the bodies. The participators said that it was like wavering in the waves and that it felt good to be in a state of ambiguity. There are many categorizations in society that tend to divide people based on age and gender, so it was interesting to hear they enjoyed the ambiguity.

I think that you can’t enjoy ambiguity or accept others unless you have room in your heart. In society, we often evaluate people based on numbers, such as income and scholastic records, but this creates a hierarchy; a world of winning and losing, and in an extreme, a world where only one person ultimately win out with the rest of us forced to have a negative opinion of ourselves. In such a situation, you will become more and more individualized and end up building a wall to say, “I can’t do this anymore.” If that happens, it’s important to explore and feel yourself. When you are able to love yourself, you are able to live on your own scale of value, not in comparison to others. That’s when we can find room in our hearts and accept others.

I frequently commend my students who I teach at the university. Since it’s the time of the year for graduation projects now, I’ve been having a lot of opportunities to evaluate students, and it’s common for most teachers to point out the flaws in the theses by telling the students that the logic is still lax, or there’s a theory not accounted, or that their reading comprehension is shallow. These are all regarding the end result, but you can expand the time frame to commend their work. What work was put in behind the end result and what kind of world have they seen? When you have room in heart, you also have a room with your own time and perception. Even if you think the other person isn’t quite there yet, you can allow yourself to consider different points of view, and you can sway in the waves between yourself and the other person. Feeling this kind of spacious waves between yourself and the other person is what I found interesting in the True Colors ACADEMY workshop through the use of the body.