2006/2007 Lab Artist

Yasuko Yokoshi

Born in Hiroshima, Japan, Yasuko Yokoshi is a contemporary dance choreographer who is based in New York City.  Nearly 20 years ago, Yokoshi arrived to New York City, and it is where she discovered post-modern dance and subsequently launched her career as a performer and a choreographer.  Emerging from the contemporary performance scene of downtown New York, Ms. Yokoshi’s work is known for its ferocity. She draws upon her Japanese heritage to make social and political commentaries on gender, acts of terror, sexuality, spirituality, tradition and modernity.

In September 2006, Yokoshi won a second, consecutive New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Award for her most recent work what we when we after receiving a “Bessie” for her solo work  Shuffle in 2003. Yokoshi's first autobiographical book, Once in A Life Time, received the acclaimed Japanese Ogai Mori Literary Award and consequently the book was published by the Gakken Publishing Company in 1991. Yokoshi made her first documentary video on her complex family history, Last Sokoshi  which received Grand Prize at the Luminous Video Competition in 1990.

Yokoshi's works - which reflect her interests in combining disciplines and mediums - have been presented at festivals and theaters nationally and internationally, including the Guggenheim Museum, Whitney Museum of American Art, Brooklyn Academy of Music/651 Arts Center, Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, Danspace Project, Performance Space 122, The Kitchen, Dance Theater Workshop, Japan Society, Taipei Theater, Festival A/D Werf (Holland), Festival Sommer SZENE (Austria), Frascati Theater (Holland), and Korea-Japan Dance Festival in Seoul and Tokyo.

Yokoshi’s works have been supported by the National Dance Project, the Rockefeller Foundation/MAP Fund, Japan Foundation, The New York State Council on the Arts, Jerome Foundation, Greenwall Foundation, Bossak/Heilbron Charitable Foundation, Arts International among others. She has been a choreographer fellow at Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography, and served as an artist-in-residence at Djerassi Art Center, Joyce Theater/Joyce Soho, Movement Research and Brooklyn Arts Exchange.  She is also the recipient of a Creative Capital grant in 2002.

Following a two-day winter visit to Southern Vermont, where she made a presentation to choreography students at Marlboro College and visited classes at the Brattleboro School of Dance, Ms. Yokoshi proposed an experimental project idea to VPL that would involve teenagers from Windham County, Vermont to create a new work, Reframe the Framework DDD (dance-docu-drama). In July 2006, Vermont Performance Lab, the Brattleboro School of Dance and the Performing Arts/Dance program of the Windham Regional Career Center worked together to host a performance workshop at the Brattleboro School of Dance led by Yasuko Yokoshi. The workshop was open to high school students and free of charge. Ms. Yokoshi has continued to develop the project in collaboration with twelve teens.  On January 21, 2007 they performed a work-in-progress version in New York City at the Association of Performing Arts Presenters and in March 2007 at the New England Youth Theater in Brattleboro . 

Yokoshi returned to Brattleboro for five weeks in June and July 2007 for another creative residency where she and 10 students continued to develop performance material for Reframe the Framework DDD.  Yokoshi hopes to premiere the work in New York City in April 2008. Visit Yokoshi's Lab Project page to learn more about Reframe the Framework DDD .