Sleeping Fires 

–GREEK PREMIERE–

In a land of the past, there once lived a woman

who traced the contours of the world with eyes that could not see.

She replaced light with sound, listening to melodies,

guided by the traces of scent, and reading truth through the touch of skin.

This is a story of winter, born from the memory held in a woman’s hands.

Κ. Τ

Blind from birth, Iku lives in the mountains together with her partner. Through the acute sensibility of her hands, she is able to ‘read’ bodies and emotions. The arrival of young Saya, an apprentice in the refined art of massage, unsettles the fragile equilibrium of her world. A profound, ineffable bond grows between the two women, as apprenticeship gradually gives way to a revelatory unfolding of trauma, repressed desires, and unspoken rage.

Sleeping Fires traces its roots to the historical practice of blind massage therapists in Japan and is set in a mountainous region north of Edo – present-day Tokyo. In a society where blind men were institutionally supported through the hierarchically structured guild of Tōdōza, women remained largely invisible, deprived of comparable social or economic backing. Within this framework, the work illuminates not only conditions of exclusion but also the unexpected forms of freedom that may emerge beyond the reach of dominant social frameworks.

Featuring visually impaired performers, Kurō Tanino crafts a deeply sensorial stage experience, in which the world is perceived beyond the primacy of sight – revealed instead through sound, rhythm, scent, and touch. Set within a landscape that is at once realistic and poetic, the play probes notions of ache, solitude, friendship, the body’s self-determination, and the capacity of reaching one another as an act of care. What emerges is a winter tale in which the body becomes a site of knowledge and contestation, and tenderness a gesture of quiet resistance.

With this production, the acclaimed Japanese creator makes his Greek debut, in a collaboration between Niwa Gekidan Penino – the company he founded and directs – and No Limits, the International Inclusive Arts Festival in Hong Kong.