SHINICHI IOVA KOGA plays in a highly physical realm that includes sound and language to explore an often surreal and dreamlike, yet utterly immediate world. Comic dilemma, the pathos of human frailty, passionate engagement and associative narratives are woven into a cohesive, wild, delicate, and unpredictable whole. Performances reveal human experiences that are both archetypal and modern, intricate while steeped in simplicity.
KOGA is the founder of the physical theater and Japanese butoh dance company inkBOAT. He has collaborated with Yumiko Yoshioka and TEN PEN CHii, Do Theatre, Minako Seki, Sleepytime Guerilla Museum, and often creates improvisation evenings with Yuko Kaseki, Cassie Terman and Sten Rudstrom. Koga's highly acclaimed productions, both solo and ensemble, have been experienced throughout North America, Europe and Japan.

inkBOAT.com

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KUNST-STOFF is a San Francisco-based dance-theater company known for its unusual and highly visual theatrical dance works, which merge different art forms, often creating unexpected collisions and provocative beauty. Blending classical ballet, contemporary dance and airborne athleticism, KUNST-STOFF's distinctive movement style extends the body beyond codified limits. "A remarkably harmonized company... some of the finest ballet-trained daredevils to be found in any metropolis." SF Examiner. The body of KUNST-STOFF consists of eight versatile dancers whose primary language is dance and movement. Artistic Director Yannis Adoniou and resident choreographer Tomi Paasonen have a decade-long history of creating interdisciplinary art.

kunst-stoff.org

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Butoh masters KOICHI & HIROKO TAMANO are the directors of Harupin-Ha Butoh Dance Theatre. Former students of Tatsumi Hijikata, one of the original founders of Butoh, the Tamanos devotion to the mastery of dance is expressed through works that are at once beautiful, graceful, shocking and grotesque. Koichi has worked closely with numerous musicians, visual artists and designers, most notably, with Grammy award winning musician Kitaro in their acclaimed collaboration Tamayura. Japan's famed author, Yukio Mishima, considered Koichi to have the most perfect body of all the dancers in Hijikata's studio. Harupin-Ha's captivating performances have been lauded by audiences worldwide.

harupin-ha.org

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Dancer/musician/vocalist DOHEE LEE is the founder of the groundbreaking PURI Project. Born out of her desire to create a new art form, in 2004 she founded the group, an innovative project in which the goal is to present elements of dance, music, spoken word, visual art, and audience participation within the context of their performances. In Korea she studied Korean traditional dance and drumming. Since coming to the US, she has been a vital contributor to both the traditional and contemporary Asian American cultural arts landscape of the Bay Area and beyond. She has worked with dancer/choreographer Sue Li-Jue's Facing East Dance & Music and butoh dancer/choreographer Shinichi Momo Koga's InkBOAT.

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NANOS OPERETTA is a new music ensemble working in extended song forms, blending cinematic sound collages, seamless juxtapositions, shifting backgrounds, recurring motifs and vocal narrations. Employing unconventional instrumentation and found objects, they incorporate elements of ethnic, film, modern chamber and cartoon music into meditations on themes of love, disease, and revolution. Interdisciplinary collaboration is one of the ensemble's main focuses and since its inception Nanos Operetta has worked and performed with many dancers, composers, physical performance artists, and filmmakers. Among these accomplished associates are butoh masters, Koichi & Hiroko Tamano; composers, Myra Melford and Frank Pahl; dancers, Shinichi Momo Koga and Ledoh; and filmmaker, Bahman Kiarostami. They are 2005 Isadora Duncan award recipients for their score to Harupin-Ha's evening-length work Serei. 2007 will see the ensemble composing a new work for the Kronos Quartet, and new collaborations with German vocalist/conceptualist Blixa Bargeld (Einstürzende Neubaten) and experimental dance theater company KUNST-STOFF.

nanosoperetta.com

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Vocalist NILS FRYKDAHL has perused music and its applications in continuous bursts of public activity since his boyhood in the 1970's, when he studied the flute and music theory with childlike intensity. The 80's saw the transferring of this devotion to the guitar, which by the 90's had been superseded by the voice. He then turned to the world, falling headlong into a love that has at times threatened to eclipse all else: the show, an empty moment shared with the almost possible. All manner of possibles announced themselves in the years to come under the flowering auspices of a show called Idiot Flesh, a difficult and visceral rock band which embraced intrusions of theater, puppetry, and dance. The 90's saw many tours of a portable Idiot Flesh around the US and work with a related ethnomusicological group: Charming Hostess. Nils performed in Europe in '97 and '99, the latter as a musician and "dancer" in the Ex-it! 99 International Butoh Festival. He has also worked with the Berkeley Repertory Theater and the Underworld Opera. His compositions have been performed at UC Berkeley and Stonybrook. The close of the millennium saw the founding of critically acclaimed groups Sleepytime Gorilla Museum and the music/theater duo - The Faun Fables.

sleepytimegorillamuseum.com