In 2011, Japan experienced an unprecedented triple whammy — 9.0 magnitude earthquake causing a major tsunami, which led to a nuclear meltdown in Fukushima. The place of my birth, Ishinomaki, a small Eastern coastal city was the closest to the epicenter and was devastated. I had no idea what to do — helpless and without agency. My collaborators of our brand new company (Team Sunshine, which at the time had only done one show) asked if I wanted to make art about it. I figured it couldn’t hurt. So we started a small project about loss and confusion and disasters happening in far away places, which eventually became JapanAmerica Wonderwave. Over a couple years, with production support from Asian Arts Initiative and COMMOTION Festival and funding from Wyncote Foundation and many crowdfunding supporters, this dance-theatre “elegy” premiered in May of 2013.

JapanAmerica Wonderwave is essentially about two friends, one of Japanese heritage and one not, attempting to understand and process tragedy in our world today. Toying with theatrical presentation, the two performers create for an audience a first-person comedic/funerary collage, placing themselves inside and outside of tragic situations, delicately enacting images of natural disasters, heroically voyaging to a post-tsunami Japan, and wildly dancing to the music that they listen to in times of desperation. I consider this piece to be one of my greatest artistic contributions to date, and is one that the Philly Inquirer called “…touchingly optimistic about humanity, what we endure, what we survive, how we grieve, and how we care for each other.”

Photos by Lindsay Browning