PERFORMANCE GALLERY

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PERFORMANCE GALLERY

SOLO WORK

Subject/Object (2016)

”Subject/Object” is a solo performance project that investigates the nature of ‘self’ through deconstruction and redefinition. Through three elements, Breathing, Digestive system, and Skin, I explored what lurked beneath this entity called 'self'. During the process, each element found its own form of theatrical expression. 'Breathing' led to the descent through a womb into birth. 'Digestive system' was married to a comedy about laughter in Japan. 'Skin' was explored through the cellular vibration outside and inside of the skin. The first part (Breath) took place in the regular audience section, which was turned into a vast field covered with plastic, forming a gigantic womb-like environment.
The second part (Tube) used the stage as a shared space with the audience, creating a warm and cozy space where personal stories were shared.
The last past (Skin) happened in the dome-shaped part at the very back of the stage space.

Material – Plastic, water, salt
Lighting design by David Crandall
Sound/Music by Khristian Weeks
Environment design by Khristian Weeks

Kawatokawa (river/skin 2012)

Concept, direction, choreography, environment/object/costume design, and performance

An autobio extravaganza, drawing from my research about “space, body, and language” in Tokyo and Czech Republic.

This full evening piece was a departure from my usual mode of performance. The piece consisted of 12 vignettes based on the memories and the landscapes of my childhood and what could have happened to me if I had lived in Japan. I'm trying to figure out what my Japanese-ness and where I belong. The quick shift from one vignette to another required a comedian/clown’s immediacy and Kabuki actor’s finesse.

Dramaturgy by Juanita Rockwell
Lighting design by Kel Millionaire

May 2012 @ Baltimore Theatre Project

Face of Another (2009)

Concept, choreography, direction, environment/costume design, and performance

Space, infinity, gravity, mortality, and the edge of my body - these were the words popping up in my mind as I worked with these two pieces. With my shoulder injuries then, I was facing the limitation of my body and trying to figure out how to move by yielding, not by forcing. Working with the space above and around me and manipulating light helped me tremendously in tackling with this challenge and entering into a new realm of experience.

A sense of displacement and search for eternity in nothingness. Fluctuating on the boundary between reality and illusion, the familiar and the unknown, the past and the present, and life and death, the delicate balance tips and breaks into each other, revealing the origin of loneliness, desire, and fear in her body.

Material: Magic mirror made of plexiglass, white powder, water

April 2010 @ Dance Place, Washington, DC.

DUO WORK

da da da pas de deux (2018)

with Rohaizad Suaidi

Twenty-three years ago, Naoko and Rohaizad met in Honolulu via Japan and Singapore. They reunited in the nation’s capital, at the beginning of the millennium. In 2017, they find each other in Baltimore revisiting their experiences living in and outside of the US.

“da da da Pas de Deux” is a whimsical performance dialogue about what Naoko and Rohaizad left behind/carried forward from their home countries of Japan and Singapore. They drive through a series of verbal and physical explorations, examining their relationships to cultural topography, language, body, and aesthetics. Humorous and meditative, da da da Pas de Deux sees Naoko and Rohaizad dancing gleefully up and down the continuum of everyday life/performance, celebrating their East/West make-up.

Plasmic Patterns (2013)

with a musician Andy Hayleck.

Where does sound begin and where does it end? Where is the boundary between sound, the body and the environs of stage and audience? Hayleck and Maeshiba delicately examined the intersection of space/body/sound through shifting temporal and spatial relationships with each other.

Aperture (2012)

I had always loved the tactile sensation in Andy Hayleck's music and proposed to work with him. We started with what was in the performance space - a piano. Over a period of three months, we concocted a physical poetry with colliding elements of silence and sound, body and space, and the visible and the invisible. This piece became the foundation of the piece we later created called "Plasmic Patterns".

What we see Why we see (2012)

With a choreographer Tzveta Kassabova

Co-conception, choreography, direction, environment, costume/object design, and performance with Tzveta Kassavoba

Memories and perceptions are strange things. We choose to see and memorize certain things, not others. A Bulgarian choreographer, Tzveta Kassabova, and I experimented with the visual perception. Plastic sheets and bags of different sizes were used as the source material to generate the context and the movements from. Actions happened behind, under, and around them, constraining the visual information audience received.

Material - plastic sheets, plastic bags

Lighting Design: Rebecca Wolf
Music by Pauchi Sasaki

January 2012 @ Dance Place, Washington, DC

Modernity Stripped Bare (2011)

With a vocalist/sound artist Yoko. K

This piece happened in conjunction of the group exhibit and conference, "Modernity stripped bare: Undressing the Nude in Contemporary Japanese Photography".With a Japanese electronic musician, Yoko K. drawing inspiration from a Japanese photographer Riichi Yamaguchi's work. As a part of the process I interviewed Riichi to find out his approach to photographing nude bodies. This interview appeared in the exhibition catalog. Yoko and I worked in the gallery day after day, contemplating what we, two Japanese women, could bring out of these intense nude photographs. The title of the piece changed from "Shining Fish: Modernity Stripped Bare" to "Stripped Bare" to reflect the simple and raw nature of the photography.

@ Art Gallery, University of Maryland, College Park

Scent of Sky (2009)

With a sound artist, Alberto Gaitan.

Choreography,environment design, and performance

Exploration of the infinity of the unknown in science/technology.
My character transformed physically and mentally through the use of mini LED lights attached inside of my coat, computer-generated sound bites, falling ping pong balls, and time-based video image slowly unfolding onto my body.

Material: white ping pong balls, LED lights

June 2009, @ Source Theatre, Washington, DC (Source Theatre Festival Mash-up series)

ENSEMBLE WORK

Dream Island (2015)

In March 2011, I heard a disturbing news that the radioactive material started leaking into the ocean near Fukushima nuclear plant. I had a visceral response to this - all the cells in my body cried out as if my own body got violated. My fond memories about water and ocean started coming back. A great sense of urgency hit me. This urge became the driving force of "Dream Island". The piece through a three-year process from the conception to the realization. Dramaturgy was built upon the place in Japan called Yumenoshima (Dream Island), which was a Japanese theme park built on a buried landfill. Movement, text, and sound were generated, constructed, and polished through the nine-month rehearsal process. Piece was 85 minutes long consisting of 14 vignettes.

The stage was set up as a thrust configuration with a square on the floor made by a danger zone tape. Audience members were invited to sit around it.
Material: large plastic sheets, dirt

Lighting Design: Rebecca Wolf
Sound Design: Khristian Weeks

Premiere - May 2015 @ Baltimore Theatre Project, Tour - June 2015 @ Joe's Movement Emporium, MD

Paraffin (2009)

Concept, choreography, direction, environment/object design, and performance

Growing up in Japan, I have followed all kinds of codes and formulas society has placed on us. Whether they are explicit or implicit, they have definitely formed my body and mind over the years without my being always conscious about their effect. I have also been becoming more and more aware of how compartmentalized our world is and how we make assumptions based on categories and labels. I wanted to examine how our response to this force manifests in everyday life. Several characters were selected who could be considered as the outsiders to the society. Dramaturgically, the piece is housed in the context of the parallel journeys of an insect collector who has disappeared in the dunes and has been forgotten by the society and a creature who was born in a civilized society and gotten abandoned.

In order to explore this theme, I wanted to play with the space both vertically (connection with the spiritual, extraordinary) and horizontally (immediate environment, everyday). Mara Neimanis, a local aerial performer, trained us to be able to work in the air. Performers also went through the physical training with me that allowed them to cultivate precise and subtle physicality.

My inspiration came from two places: books ("The Woman in the Dunes” by Kobo Abe and “Unfashionable Human Body” by Bernard Rudofsky) and material (paraffin paper). I remembered this paper from the book cover of a Japanese publishing company. The tactile feel of this paper, its color and translucent quality stuck on my sense memory. It created murky mysterious mood.

Paraffin paper was used both tangible object and as the physical and visual metaphor in creating characters and scenes and asa motif to weave multiple stories together. A non-verbal, non-linear narrative structure allowed the audience to create their own versions of the stories.

Material - Paraffin paper, ropes
Lighting design by Kel Millionaire, Rebecca Wolf
Costume design by Kathy Abbott
Mask design by Susan Stroupe

Received Best Dance Performance in Citypaper Best of Baltimore 2009.

Premiere - June 2009 @ Baltimore Theatre Project
Tour - March 2010 @Quest International Visual Theatre Festival, Washington DC, April 2010 Dance Place, Washington D

Remains of Shadow (2006)

Conception, direction, choreography, environment/costume/object design, performance

This was the first time I consciously and overtly examined my Japanese heritage. I wanted to explore my relationship with Japan and America and how the relationship between two countries has influenced me in my life. History, personal memories, and unresolved conflicts became the driving force of these pieces.

The piece consisted of two parts. First part being the journey of a blue-eyed doll that was sent from America to Japan during WWI as a token of friendship. The second part was about the experience of going through various stages 49 days after death.

Material - translucent cloth, plastic
Lighting design by Sabrina Hamilton (Ko Festival)
Projection design by Chas Marsh

Premiere - Spring 2005 @ Ko Festival of Performance, Amherst, MA, Tour - 2006 Questfest, 2006 Capital Fringe Festval, 2007 Theatre of Yugen

Trace (2004)

Concept, choreography, direction, environment design, sound design, and performance

This Kennedy Center commissioned piece allowed me to work with a videographer, Chas Marsh, Audrey Chen as a musician, and Jacki Milad's drawing as animation. With these added visual/auditory elements, I experimented expanding the mise-en-sene into the 3D realm.

"Trace" examines the state of displacement through the trace within one's body and mind as well as in the society. Six individual segments treat various states of collision such as the the nature vs. the technology, the disposable culture vs. the longing for the spirituality, and tradition vs. freedom. Trace is multi-disciplinary in its nature, combining movements with live voice and cello by Audrey Chen, the video images by Chas Marsh, and the animation by Jackie Milad and Dan Breen. Costume by Jenifer Alonzo, Lighting design by Cathy Eliot.

Material - white scrim, cheese cloth masks, newspaper
Lighting design by Cathy Eliott
Costume design by Jenifer Alonzo
Video design by Chas Marsh
Animation Design by Jackie Milad, Dan Breen

Commissioned by Kennedy Center Local Dance Commissioning Project
Received 'Excellence in Sound Design' by Metro DC Dance Award, nominated for 'Outstanding Overall Production', 'Outstanding New Work', and 'Outstanding Individual Performance'.

May 2004 @ Kennedy Center Millennium Stage

The Voyage (2003)

Concept, direction, choreography, environment/object design, and performanceThe piece consists of five stories about the voyage captured at the points of departures and arrivals. Intricate human relationships, our conflicted existence. The journey between life and death is vividly depicted through layers of images in the evocative visual poetry.

Costume design by Meredith Wallace
Lighting Design by Mark Fink
Music Composition by Jason Sloan
Sound Design by Gabriel Walker

June 2004 @ Baltimore Theatre Project

Communitas (2002)

Concept, direction, choreography, environment/object design, and performanceInspired by Victor Turner's concept of 'Communitas', the piece taps into the uncertainty of our beings through the issues that vex today's world, such as unbalanced resources, youth violence, and aging.

In the landscape of destruction, people wander about searching for a connection: with people, places, and the past. Through images of death and birth in nature, the piece illuminates the human figures which long for love, hope, and beauty, asking the ultimate question: "where are we going?"

Funded by the D.C. Commissions on Arts and Humanities.

Lighting design by Scott Rothenseld
Sound Design by Lukas Zarwell
Song Composition by Sarah Sathya

PERFORMANCE HISTORY

ORIGINAL WORK

SOLO

(Conception/Direction/Choreography/Performance)

2016

Subject/Object
Baltimore Theatre Project

2014

Visit
Atlas Arts Performing Center

2012

Kawatokawa (river/skin)
Baltimore Theatre Project

2010

When the Wind Crossed, My Body Cried Like an Octopus
CESTA,Tabor, Czech Republic

Face of Another
Dance Place, Washington, DC

2008

Home Sweet Home
Dance Hakushu, Japan

So no ma ma (As is)
Joyce Soho, NY

2007

No naka no bara (A Rose in the Wild)
DC International Improvisation Festival

2006

Improbable Encounter
Dialog of Four Cultures Festival, Lodz, Poland

ENSEMBLE

(Direction/Choreography/Performance/Scenography)

2015

Dream Island
Baltimore Theatre Project

2014

Twilight Station
Questfest, Baltimore Theatre Project, DC

2010

Paraffin
Baltimore Theatre Project, MD, Dance Place, DC, Questfest, DC

2007

Absence
International New Media Festival: Moving Closer, Warsaw, Poland

2006

Remains of Shadow
Theatre of Yugen, San Francisco, CA; Capital Fringe Festival, DC; Ko Festival of Amherst, MA

2005

49 Days
Creative Alliance, MD

2004

Trace
Kennedy Center Millennium Stage, DC

The Voyage
Baltimore Theatre Project

Spring that has gone too long
Warehouse Gallery, DC

2003

Gyroscope Project
Smithsonian Institute Hirshhorn Museum, DC

Communitas
Kennedy Center Millennium Stage, DC; Smithsonian Institute Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, DC

DUO

(Direction/Choreography/Performance/Scenography)

2018

da da da Pas de Deux
Baltimore Theatre Project

2013

Plasmic Patterns
Baltimore Theatre Project

2012

Apertures
Tank, New York, NY

What we see Why we see
Dance Place, DC

2011

Modernity Stripped Bare
The Art Gallery, Univ. of Maryland, MD

2009

Scent of Sky
Source Theatre, Washington DC

Numinous
Source Theatre, Washington DC ; 14 Karat Cabaret, Maryland Institute College of Art BBox, MD

2005

The Peel
Warehouse Next Door, Washington, DC

OTHER WORK

DANCE THEATRE for other companies

(Direction, Choreography)

2014

Twilight Station
Quest For Arts@Baltimore Theatre Project

2006

Figureground
Dialogue of Four Cultures Festival@Manufaktura, Lodz, Poland

Palimpsest
Studio Filmowe, Lodz, Poland

DANCE PERFORMANCE for other companies

2013

Hagoromo, a Noh play by Zeami
Theatre Nohgaku@Bloomsburg Theatre Ensemble, PA

2012

Atsumori, a Noh play by Zeami
Theatre Nohgaku@Bloomsburg Theatre Ensemble, PA

1998

Fish in the Garden
Dances We Dance, HI (choreography by Fritz Ludin)

1996

The Tubers
The Honolulu Contemporary Art Museum (choreography by Heidi Miller)

1995

Passacaglia & Fugue in C Minor by Doris Humphrey
Dances We Dance/Univ. of Hawai’I Dance Department, Kennedy Theatre
(reconstruction and direction by Betty Jones & Fritz Ludin)

1994

Ancient Woman
Earth Stage, Hakushu, Japan
(choreography by Min Tanaka)

1993

Ancient Greenland
Earth Stage, Hakushu, Japan
(choreography by Min Tanaka)

In God’s Hands, Money
Tenney Theatre, HI
(choreography by Cheryl Flaharty)

1992

The Mythology of Angels
Mamiya Theatre, HI
(choreography by Cheryl Flaharty)

The Garden Dance
East West Center, HI
(choreography by Cheryl Flaharty)

1991

Island Bound
Earle Ernst Lab Theatre
(direction by Aaron Levine)

PLAYS

(Choreography& Movement Direction)

2014

Lysistrata by Aristophanes
(direction by Yury Urnov)
Mainstage, Towson University

2012

You For Me For You by Mia Chung
(direction by Yury Urnov)
Woolley Mammoth Theatre

2012

You For Me For You by Mia Chung
(direction by Yury Urnov)
Ma-Yi Theatre Company, NYC

2012

Three Sisters
(adaptation & direction by Yury Urnov)
Bell Foundry, Baltimore

2009

Illuminoctum
(direction by Brian Ragan)
Single Carrot Theatre, Baltimore

1999

F.O.B.by David Henry Hwang
(direction by David Goyette)
Tsunami Theatre Company

1999

Knives, Fans, Whipping Sticks (direction by Chris Millado)
Hawai’I Alliance for Philippine Performing Arts

PLAYS

(Direction & Choreography)

2011

Kaspar by Peter Handke
Mainstage, Towson University

2008

Miss Julie by August Strindberg
Studio Theatre, Towson University

2007

Sotoba Komachi by Yukio Mishima
St. Timothy’s School, Baltimore

2007

Largo Desolato by Vaclav Havel
Studio Theatre, Towson University

2006

Troy Women by Karen Hartman
Studio Theatre, Towson University

2005

The Marriage of Bette and Boo by Christopher Durang
Mainstage, Towson University

2004

The Other Shore by Gao Xingjian
Inscape Theatre, Villa Julie College, Baltimore

2003

Tongues by Sam Shepard
Studio Theatre, Towson University

Success by Arthur Kopit
Studio Theatre, Towson University

Adoption by Joyce Carol Oates
Studio Theatre, Towson University

The Chalky White Substance by Tennessee Williams
Studio Theatre, Towson University

2003

The Green Stockings by Kobo Abe
Tsunami Theatre Company, Washington, DC

2002

Exercise in Style by Raymond Queneau
Leneon Theatre, Arlington, VA

Ballad of Yachiyo by Philip Kan Gotanda
Tsunami Theatre Company

2001

Trying to Find Chinatown by David Henry Hwang
Tsunami Theatre Company

The Little Match Girl by Minoru Betsuyaku
Tsunami Theatre Company

Rough for Theatre I by Samuel Beckett
Tsunami Theatre Company

2000

The Dressing Room by Kunio Shimizu
Tsunami Theatre Company

1999`

Flipzoids by Ralph Peña
Kumu Kahua Theatre, HI

1998

Water Station III by Ohta Shogo**(direction by Ohta Shogo)
Setagaya Public Theatre, Tokyo; Singapore International Theatre Festival

1997

Sarachi (Vacant Lot) by Ohta Shogo (translation by Robert. T. Rolf)
Kumu Kahua Theatre

1996

Barefoot Fugue by Ohta Shogo (translation by Naoko Maeshiba)
Earle Ernst Lab Theatre