Collaborators

Hikaru Okamoto is a dance researcher based in Hyogo. She learned ballet and began contemporary dance at age 18. She received an encouragement award in the new choreographer division of the Yokohama Dance Collection EX2014. Her research has focused on choreographic approaches to movement habit. She completed her Ph.D. thesis entitled Hijikata Tatsumi’s Embodiment and Thought of "Crisis" at Kobe University in 2022. Since autumn 2023, she has been an assistant professor at Professional College of Arts and Tourism. Recently, she was a one-day lecturer on the introduction of dance history in Japan in a school project, Domestic Dance Study Abroad @ Kobe 9th hosted by Dance Box.

ⒸTAIFUN

Dr. Nanako Nakajima is a dance scholar, dance dramaturg, and traditional Japanese dancer. She received the Special Commendation of the Elliott Hayes Award in 2017 for Outstanding Achievement in Dramaturgy from the Literary Manager and Dramaturgs of the Americas. She has worked with festivals, theatres, and universities, where she integrates her research on aging into dance. She was a Valeska-Gert Visiting Professor 2019/20, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany, Faculty Dramaturg in dance, Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, Canada, and Steering Committee Member, Interdisciplinary Research Center for Performing Arts, Kyoto University of the Arts. Her publications include The Aging Body in Dance (Co-ed G. Brandstetter, Rountledge, 2017).

photo: Hironobu Hosokawa

Kaku Nagashima is a pioneering dramaturg in Japan, Kaku Nagashima has worked with a wide range of directors and choreographers. He translated plays by Samuel Beckett and other modern and contemporary playwrights. In recent years, he developed an interest in bringing theatrical ideas and techniques beyond theatre into town settings, actively engaging in art projects. He assumed Director of Festival/Tokyo from 2018 to 2020 and one of the directors of Tokyo Festival from 2021 to 2023. At Tokyo University of the Arts, he teaches dramaturgy and curatorial practice in the performing arts.

Dr. Pil Hansen is Professor of performing arts at the University of Calgary, editor of the Routledge book series Expanded Dramaturgy, founding member of Vertical City Performance, and a dance dramaturg. Her artistic and empirical research examines dynamics of memory, learning, and socio-environmental relations in creative processes, most recently with a focus on accessibility. Hansen has dramaturged 35+ works and her research is widely published. She authored the monograph Performance Generating Systems in Dance (Intellect, 2022) and edited the books Performing the Remembered Present (Methuen, 2017) and Dance Dramaturgy (Palgrave, 2015).

photo: Matsumoto Kazuyuki

Dr. Yoshiji Yokoyama is a dramaturg and programmer working for SPAC-Shizuoka Performing Arts Center and Tokyo Festival. He is a founding member of Dramaturg / Japan, a board member of ON-PAM (Open Network for Performing Arts Managers), and a part-time lecturer at Gakushuin University (Tokyo). Born in Japan in 1977, he earned his Ph. D. in Theatre Studies at l’Université Paris X-Nanterre in 2008. He is currently writing about a history of Western acting theories. His recent areas of interest encompass frameworks of performing arts, performing arts in Asia, biology and performing arts, and more.

Dr. Charlene Rajendran is a Malaysian theatre educator, writer and dramaturg who is currently on sabbatical and wandering through varied spaces to listen, learn and unlearn. She is interested in questions of difference, interdisciplinarity, play-based pedagogy and thought-leadership in urban multicultural contexts. She works as Associate Professor at the National Institute of Education - Nanyang Technological University, Singapore and has been Co-Director of Asian Dramaturgs’ Network since 2017. Her work as dramaturg includes interdisciplinary and community arts projects such as ItSelf TerJadi, Kepaten Obor, In the Silence of Your Heart and Both Sides, Now. Publications include (Asian) Dramaturgs’ Network: Sensing, Complexity, Tracing and Doing (lead editor, 2023), Changing Places: Drama Box and the Politics of Space (lead editor, 2022).