Artists & Projects Directory
Yasuko Yokoshi
Yasuko Yokoshi, born in Hiroshima,
Japan and based in New York since 1981, imaginatively
entwines cultures and personal insights to create radical dance performance. Through
the melding of dance, video, and storytelling and the layering of contemporary perspectives
with ancient mythologies, Yokoshi creates cross-cultural experiences with
biting wit and outrageous imagination.
Recent works include: Reframe
the Framework DDD (2008), a reimagining of David Gordon's seminal work from
1984 created in collaboration with high-school performers from Brattleboro, Vermont;
what we when we (2006), which
transforms Raymond Carver's What We Talk
About When We Talk About Love into Japanese traditional Kabuki Su-odori
dance (translated as bare dance) capturing the "refined articulation of ambiguity" for which
the style is known; and Shuffle (2003), a solo which looks at the choreographer's family history
through the lens of Japanese mythology and Shinto Buddhism.
Her
works have been seen at the Guggenheim Museum, Whitney Museum of American Art,
Brooklyn Academy of Music/651 Arts, Massachusetts
Museum of Contemporary Art, Portland Institute for
Contemporary Art, Danspace Project, Performance Space 122, The Kitchen, Dance
Theater Workshop, Japan Society, Taipei Theater, Festival A/D Werf (Holland),
Festival Sommer SZENE (Austria), Frascati Theater (Holland), and Korea-Japan
Dance Festival in Seoul and Tokyo.
Yokoshi's
works have been supported by the National Dance Project, the Rockefeller
Foundation/MAP Fund, Japan Foundation, The New York State Council on the Arts,
Jerome Foundation, Greenwall Foundation, Bossak/Heilbron Charitable Foundation,
and Arts International among others. She has been a choreographer fellow at Maggie Allesee
National Center
for Choreography, and served as an artist-in-residence at Djerassi Art
Center, Joyce
Theater/Joyce Soho, Movement Research and Brooklyn Arts Exchnage. Recent awards include a Foundation for
Contemporary Arts Award (2008) and a BAXTen Award (2007). She is also the
recipient of a Creative Capital grant (2002), a New York Foundation for the
Arts Artist Fellowship (2004) and two "Bessie" awards for her performances in Shuffle (2003) and what we when we (2006).
Yokoshi
has been an associate curator at the Kitchen since 2004 and served as a guest
curator at St. Spot in Yokohama,
Japan. She has
given numerous lectures and workshops at institutions and schools, including Sarah Lawrence
College, Marlboro
College, Hampshire
College, Hunter
College, The Kitchen Sidney Kahn
Summer Institute, and Florida
State University.
Yokoshi's
first autobiographical book, Once in A Life
Time, received the acclaimed Japanese Ogai Mori Literary Award (1990) and
consequently the book was published by the Gakken Publishing Company in 1991. As
a dancer Yasuko Yokoshi appeared in a series of productions by Dutch
choreographer, Gonnie Heggen, with whom she toured extensively in Europe from 1992-1996. Yokoshi holds a B.A. from Hampshire College where studied contemporary
dance. She has also studied acting and directing at Experimental Theater Wing
at New York University. Yokoshi holds a first degree
black belt in Kendo, a Japanese martial art.