Having started her career in the 2000s, Yo Nakamura is an energetic dancer and choreographer who has earned critical attention with her adaptations of masterpieces from film and literature, such as films by Yasujiro Ozu or Seicho Matsumoto’s short-story The Face, into the medium dance. Nakamura has been the assistant choreographer of figures like Ryohei Kondo, Shuji Onodera and Ko Murobushi, in whose Enthusiastic Dance on the Grave she also performed. She has created works throughout Europe and Asia. In recent years, Nakamura has focused her attention on choreography for operas.

Her piece Giselle, which will be performed at the Aichi Triennale 2022, is an ambitious attempt to adapt one of the masterpieces of classical ballet into a solo piece about a woman living in the world of today.
Nakamura boldly reconstructs the classic’s well-known themes about the complicated relationship of love, life and death unfolding between Giselle, Albrecht and Hilarion from a personal perspective and employs dance, quotes of poetic texts by Virginia Woolf, as well as humor and grave seriousness in a solo piece that will resonate deeply with today’s audiences.

• Nakamura Yo Website

Selected Works & Awards

2021

Serse, Nikikai New Wave Opera Theater, Meguro Persimon Hall, Tokyo, Japan

2020

GISELLE special 30 min ver. (video)

2019

Pendulum vol.3, Yokohama Dance Collection Aozora Dance, Kanagawa, Japan

2016

5th El Sur Foundation Newcomer Award for Contemporary Dance, Japan

2013

Sibiu International Theater Festival Jury Prize, Yokohama Dance Collection EX, Japan

• Nakamura Yo solo performance GISELLE, 2021
• Photo: Hideto Maezawa