Roko Kawai investigates the relationship between the specificity of traditional dance and the craft of improvisation. Her work includes international collaborations in Bali, Indonesia, New Zealand, and Japan, and she has performed nationally in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, Hawaii, New York, Chicago, at the Florida Dance Festival and Jacob’s Pillow Inside/Out. Roko has been supported by the Artists Exploration Fund of Arts International, Dance Advance, Independence Foundation, the PA Council on the Arts, DanceLINK, and others. In 2003, she was awarded The Pew Fellowship in the Arts for Choreography and, in 2005, a 7-month Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission Fellowship in Tokyo during which she trained in Classical Japanese Dance with Hanayagi Kazu, and pursued artistic research on the contemporary dance scene in Japan as well as on kagura in Shimane prefecture. This Fall, she performed as part of the Philadelphia cast in Jerome Bel's The show must go on at the Philadelphia Live Arts Festival. She is also currently working on a writing project, an 'Artist's Workbook' to be published on the web, that reflects upon issues of “categorizations and collisions,” “belonging and longing,” in the 15 year arc of her career.
© IWASA Eiichiro, Chihan Art Project
