Takami was born and raised in Japan and studied ballet, modern, jazz, and improvisation in Japan, New York City, Washington, DC, and San Francisco. She received her BA in Modern Dance at Nihon University College of Art, and since 1985, has been performing her original work in Japan and the United States. Since she moved to San Francisco in 1991, she has performed at the ODC Gallery, Dancer’s Group, the Cowell Theater, Noh Space, Jon Sims Center for the Arts, 848 Community Space, among others. Co-Founder and Co-Producer of the San Francisco Butoh Festival from 1994 to 1999, Takami met and began working with Butoh pioneers Akira Kasai and Setsuko Yamada. Takami also performed with Akira Kasai as part of the Festival in 1998 at Yerba Buena Gardens. These pioneers’ concept of and attitude toward dance deeply affected Takami’s work, altering the course of her artistic explorations. Since 1998, she has been combining modern dance, her primary background, with Japanese butoh concepts of image, time, and space to create a technique distinct from both modern and butoh, a unique, hybrid style of dance called MoBu (Modern & Butoh). She started to teach these concepts to students in 1998. In 2002, she founded her dance company, Toumei (renaming it MoBu Dance Group in 2005). Since founding MoBu Dance Group, Takami has been invited to perform and lead regular MoBu workshops in Tokyo (invited by Setsuko Yamada and Biwakei), and in Vanne, France (invited by Tygaa); she performed in Bangkok in December 2006 at the invitation of Ray of Light Production.
Takami is also passionate about teaching children. She had her own dance school in Shizuoka, Japan near her hometown from 1983 to 1985. In 1996, she opened her own dance program in San Francisco called DancEsteem. In May, 2006, DanceEsteem held its 9th annual performance at Fort Mason’s Cowell Theater. Takami also started an exchange program with young dancers from her home town of Numazu, Japan. For the past 12 years, she has worked as an artist for performing arts workshops, teaching Pre-K through 5th grade students in public schools across the Bay Area.
Monique Tajiri Goldwater
Dancer
Monique was born in France and is French-Japanese. She started training Ballet at age 3 at Rosella Hightower International Ballet School in Cannes , France . At age 15, she was promoted to the Avigninon Opera Ballet as well as Normandy Opera Ballet to dance both classical and contemporary repertoires. Since moving to the US she has been working with LA Chamber Ballet as a principal dancer. She joined MoBu Dance in 2003 and has performed in LOST IN SAND 2 (2003), LOST IN SAND 3 (2004), SHIZUKU: DROP 1 (2005), SHIZUKU: DROP 2 (2006), SHIZUKU: DROP 3 (2006), and Illusion 1 (2007). She has also danced with Ledoh's Salt Farm and is one of the founders of Nature Theater Oklahoma. She has performed and is one of the members of Mary Sano Duncan Dancers. She was one of the judges for National Art Ballet Competition held in Japan during the 2007 summer.
Mai Shimizu
Dancer
Mai was born and raised in Tokyo, Japan. She danced for the first time at the age of two to her favorite song, Mambo#5 by Perez Prado. For her keen interest in many international and classical dance styles, she credits the rich environment provided by her parents during her childhood and her exposure to many kinds of music.
As a child Mai excelled at drawing and piano, as well as many sports, especially gymnastics. She would later discover the partner dance styles that combined the art, music and athletic skills she had developed in her youth. As she learned them in depth, she found international style Ballroom and Latin to be the ideal forms in which to explore the maximum possibility of body mechanics.
In 1996, Mai started lessons in Ballroom and Latin with Japanese champions Akio and Sayoko Kuwabara. Impressed by her talent they introduced her to former world champion, Nadia Eftedal in 1999. This opportunity brought her to the United States and she started intensive world-class training. She studied the Walter Laird Latin technique with Dima Sukachov in 2001. She moved to SF Bay Area in 2002 where she learned technique with Sukachov and Ray Rivers, Laird's star pupil in the 1960s. During 2004-6, she had many tryouts for both the United States and European championship representatives and continues to study and perform many styles of American partner dancing.
Mai enjoys expressing the spirited characters derived from her experience, imagination and within her own nature and for this dance is the perfect medium. She considers dance a life-long learning process. She has been intensively studying classical ballet with Richard Gibson since 2004 and with Katy Warner since 2007. She joined MoBu Dance Group and performed in their production of Illusion in 2006. In the coming year Mai will join the Salsa Puente production team’s campaign to help end hunger for the world’s children.
Mai has taught both privately and in groups at Bay West Ballroom
in Marin as well as at private and public schools throughout the Bay Area. She joined Marin Dance Theatre's Out Reach Program as a dance instructor.
Mai's performances over the last decade include:
- Garage Rockin' Craze in Tokyo, Nature's Sunshine Products, INC;
- Latin American Convention w/ Grupo Latino in Salt Lake City, Utah;
- Featured as a dancer in the independent film, Out of Step;
- Salsa Performance Extravaganza at Mission Cultural Center in S. F.
Roberta Marguerite Chávez
Dancer
Roberta Marguerite Chávez grew up in Hawaiian Gardens, California, where she began dancing at the age of five. She has performed for Brittany Brown Ceres at ODC Theater and Stanford and with Maica Folch for Dia de los Muertos. She currently performs with Davalos Dance Company and Terry Sendgraff Aerial Dancers.
Kana Tanaka
Glass Arts & Set Design
web site: kanatanaka.com
Kana Tanaka uses the medium of glass to explore light and optical phenomena and to challenge conventional ways of seeing. Tanaka was born and raised in Aichi, Japan. In 1992 in the Arts and Crafts Department at the National Aichi University of Education in Japan, she became captivated by the qualities of molten glass and specialized in glassblowing. Then, in the MFA program at Rhode Island School of Design (1996-1999) in Providence, RI, she began to use glass as a medium for emphasizing experience of light, and her style shifted from small object making to site-specific installation works that involved the viewer in more rich and multi-dimensional ways. At the end of 2000, she moved to California to expand her career in art with glass and light.
Tanaka is the recipient of a Pollock-Krasner foundation grant in 2001 and POLA Art foundation grant (Tokyo) in 2002. She was commissioned by the Solano County in 2004 to complete a permanent public art installation for the main entry lobby of the Solano County Government Center in Fairfield, CA. Tanaka has been introducing “glass art” into the stage set design in San Francisco theaters since 2003, and was nominated by the Isadora Duncan Dance Awards Committee (IZZIEs) for the visual category award for the production of “Shizuku-drop” in 2006.
