Nina Winthrop formed Nina Winthrop and Dancers in 1991. Her works have been presented in venues throughout New York City and Los Angeles, including Danspace Project, Joyce SoHo, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Roulette, Movement Research at the Judson Church, Toronada Theater at PS122 and The Flea Theater. Her dance films have been screened in the US and abroad. Nina was the curator of Dance Conversations @ The Flea, a performance and discussion series, from 2005-2013. She also curated the dance film showcase Dance on Film/Film on Dance at Symphony Space in 2004. She was awarded a Bessie Schönberg Choreographers’ Residency at The Yard in 2004, a Dancenow/NYC’s Silo Artist Residency in 2005, and participated in the Schönberg Choreographers Lab at DTW in 2005. A graduate of Bennington College, Nina danced with Wendy Perron, Susan Rethorst, Yoshiko Chuma, Sally Silvers and Kei Takei, with whom she toured the USA and Japan. She studied with Erick Hawkins, Merce Cunningham, and Deborah Hay.
Jon Gibson was a composer, multi-wind instrumentalist and visual artist active in new music for over 50 years. He played a key role in the development of American avant-garde music and performed and collaborated with a host of musicians, choreographers and artists, including Merce Cunningham, Nancy Topf, Thomas Buckner, Ralph Gibson, Lucinda Childs, JoAnne Akalitis, Harold Budd, David Behrman, Fast Forward, Steve Reich, Terry Riley, LaMonte Young and Alvin Curran. Jon was a founding member of the Philip Glass Ensemble. His opera, Violet Fire, received its world premiere at the National Theater of Belgrade in 2006 and was presented at BAM’s Next Wave Festival the same year.
Roxanne Steinberg dances to transcend familiar vocabularies and bring about a heightened sense of perception and connectivity. A graduate of Bennington College, she has sustained a solo performance practice for over four decades and also collaborates internationally with dancers, musicians, and visual artists. Her work in choreography and improvisation brought her to Japan and to Body Weather Farm in 1987, experiences that continue to inform her exploration of dance as a vehicle for embodied knowing. She introduced Body Weather training in Los Angeles in 1988 and, in 1990, co-founded La Boca Theater with Oguri at Sunshine Mission/Casa de Rosas. As an artist-in-residence at the Electric Lodge in Venice since 1997, she leads training and curates Flower of the Season. Her work contrasts the ephemerality of dance with the perplexing weight of nostalgia and unfolds within environments of handmade and found objects. A 2020 COLA Individual Artist Fellow, she developed material for her 2023 solo exhibition, “Don’t Hoard the Merchandise,” at Morleigh Steinberg’s ARCANEspace.
Oguri, born in Japan, whose inspiration for dance began after meeting Ankoku Butoh founder Tatsumi Hijikata. In 1985, he joined Min Tanaka’s Mai-Juku and participated in the founding of Body Weather Farm, where dance training was integrated with traditional organic farming. Since moving to Los Angeles in 1991, Oguri has co-directed Body Weather Laboratory Los Angeles with Roxanne Steinberg, creating solo, duet, collaborative, ensemble, and community engagement works for theaters and site-specific/unspecific environments. His collaborations with percussionist Adam Rudolph led to an expanding network of musicians. Inspired by the American landscape and literature, his work explores the relationships among body, place, memory, and time. Since 2005, he has co-produced “Flower of the Season” at the Electric Lodge in Venice, California, a platform for interdisciplinary collaboration and experimentation. He continues a long-standing creative partnership with Andrés Corchero, presenting work internationally, including at Festival Grec in Barcelona. This summer, Oguri will teach a four-week Intensive Body Weather Workshop with Christine Quoiraud and Corchero at Larret en Mouvement in southern France.
Dana Iova-Koga studied in the Experimental Theater Wing at NYU, danced and farmed with Min Tanaka in Japan for five years and has had the deep privilege of working with legends like Ellen Stewart and Anna Halprin. She has been a member of inkBoat since 2005. She is 17th generation Wudang San Feng Pai lineage holder through her Shifu David Wei of Wudang West, and is an “Inspired by FM” teacher in the Fighting Monkey Practice. She teaches, makes art, parents, gardens and offers “Unfolding” as a one-on-one program to support others along their creative paths. Dana begins many days asking herself the question: “what does it mean to love life today?” She is honored to be a part of Nina’s offering of Love.
Shinichi Iova-Koga serves as the Artistic Director of the dance theater company inkBoat, founded by Iova-Koga in 1998. Iova-Koga’s long history with Butoh infuses his presence, while years of commitment to improvisation unfold actions not beholden to a particular tradition. Aikido, Judo and his depth in the Daoist internal arts shape his structure. Iova-Koga has been honored by 6 Bay Area “Izzie” awards and grants from MAP fund, New England Foundation for the Arts, Rainin Foundation, Gerbode Foundation and more. He is the editor of the book “95 Rituals,” a tribute to Anna Halprin, and a contributing writer to “The Routledge Companion to Butoh Performance.” He is featured in the book “Butoh America.” Gratitude to mentors Ruth Zaporah, Ralph Lemon, Anna Halprin and Hiroko Tamano.
Mina Nishimura, from Tokyo, was introduced to butoh and improvisational dance through Kota Yamazaki. After studying at the Merce Cunningham Studio, she performed and collaborated with John Jasperse, Dean Moss, SIA, Yasuko Yokoshi, Neil Greenberg, Yoshiko Chuma, Nami Yamamoto, Vicky Shick, Moriah Evans, and Rashaun Mitchell + Silas Riener, among many other groundbreaking artists. Her choreographic works have been presented at numerous venues, including NYU Skirball Center, BMC+AC, Danspace Project, Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, The Kitchen, Gibney, and Mount Tremper Arts Center. She received the 2019 FCA Grants to Artists Award and was a 2021–22 Danspace Project Renewal Residency Artist, where she created four iterations of Mapping a Forest while Searching for an Opposite Term of Exorcist, whose latest iteration, 空 [Kuu] version, premiered at Danspace Project in 2024. Nishimura completed her MFA Fellowship at Bennington College in 2021, where she currently teaches, and is also one of the lead curators of the Whenever Wherever Festival in Tokyo.
Kota Yamazaki is a choreographer born in Niigata, Japan. Introduced to butoh by Akira Kasai at 18, he has presented work internationally, including collaborations with architect Toyo Ito. Since 2003, he has directed New York–based Fluid hug-hug. His awards include a Bessie Award, NYFA Fellowship, and Guggenheim Fellowship. Since 2019, he has been guest faculty at Bennington College. In 2024, he created Thin paper, autonomous synapses, nomads, Tokyo(ing) for Footnote NZ Dance. Since 2009, he has organized the Whenever Wherever Festival, exploring artistic community and civic engagement through the body. (www.kotayamazaki.com)