Yasuko Yokoshi

Yasuko Yokoshi

Yasuko Yokoshi, born in Hiroshima, Japan and is based in New York City.

Yokoshi's works have received commissions from, and have been presented at, Theatre de la Ville in Paris, Dublin Dance Festival in Ireland, and in the US at the Guggenheim Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art, Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, The Kitchen, Danspace Project, Dance Theater Workshop, Japan Society, and Performance Space 122 among others. Yokoshi has been recently appointed as a Resident Commissioned Artist at New York Live Arts.

Recent awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship (2009), Foundation for Contemporary Arts Award (2008), a BAXTen Award (2007), and a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship (2004). She has received two New York Dance and Performance "Bessie" awards for her choreography for Shuffle (2003) and what we when we (2006). She is also the recipient of grants from Creative Capital Foundation, NEFA/National Dance Project, the Rockefeller Foundation/ MAP Fund, Japan Foundation, Jerome Foundation, Greenwall Foundation, Bossak/Heilbron Charitable Foundation, the New York State Council on the Arts, and Arts International among others.

She has been a Choreographic Fellow at the 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 Exchange.

Yokoshi currently serves as an associate curator at The Kitchen and is a member of the Board of Directors of Movement Research.

Yokoshi is also a published author whose first autobiographical book, Once in a Life Time, received the acclaimed Japanese Ogai Mori Literary Award (1990). She holds a B.A. from Hampshire College in Massachusetts.

Yasuko Yokoshi's Links:

MAPP site

Choreographic Fellow | December 2 - 20, 2005

what we when we

Through an artistic collaboration with Masumi Seyama, revered master teacher of Kabuki Su-odori dance in Japan, Yokoshi sought to translate and transform the stark writings of Raymond Carver's "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love" to traditional Japanese dance. While in residence, Yokoshi conceptually questioned authenticity and ownership of culture, investigated power dynamics in gender and explored the multiple perspectives that shape the contemporary trans-cultural experience.

what we when we premiered at Dancespace Project March 23-26, 2006 and received a 2006 BESSIE Award.

Collaborators in Residence: Ryutaro Ishikane, Eikazu Nakamura, Matsuhide Nakashima, Hiromi Naruse [performers] and Kuniya Sawamura [coach]

DTW Partnership | October 4-19, 2009

Tyler Tyler

Tyler Tyler continues Yokoshi's unique collaboration with her revered master teacher of Kabuki Su-odori dance, Masumi Sayama. At MANCC, Yokoshi furthered her investigations of the work by bringing together the American and Japanese cast members for the first time. With the American cast, Yokoshi applied a postmodern vocabulary to the scale and structure of the Kabuki-style choreography. With the traditional Japanese performers, who all trained for many years with Seyama, she explored the effect of contemporary choreographic techniques on classical Japanese dance forms.

Tyler Tyler premiered at Dance Theater Workshop March 17 - 20, 2010.

This 2009 DTW partnership project was supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts.

Collaborators in Residence: Julie Alexander, Kayvon Pourazar [American dancers], Kayo Seyama [Japanese dancer], Kuniya Sawamura [Japanese actor/dancer], Naoki Asaji [Japanese actor] and Steven Reker [musician/composer]