Renka - Playful and Rhythmical

What would you do if someone gave you five minutes to create an ikebana arrangement?  I have been surprised many times when I have looked at the watch after spending more than an hour on an arrangement. Still, ikebana is also about spontaneity and about catching what's in the moment.

The late iemoto of the Sogetsu school, Hiroshi Teshigahara, introduced the Renka style ikebana as a new form of working together on ikebana, and as an avant-garde approach to the classical world of Japanese arts. The poetry style of Renga is going back at least 900 years. It is a playful form of poetry were the first poet starts the poem with a vers setting a theme. The second poet continues with another verse, and so on until the poem is finished.

Hiroshi Teshigahara explained "Renka is interesting because the range of expression can be expanded by the clashing or the concurrence of two individual styles. The unexpected, unpredictable result from such cooperative work transcends the individual and makes it really interesting. The beginning work is expanded into all kinds of possibilities, so if it is not up to par, the whole work will fail."