Emiko Agatsuma is a dancer and a choreographer specializing in Butoh, a dance genre that emerged in Japan in the1960s as a reaction to Western modern dance. Having graduated from Waseda University in Tokyo in 1999, she joined the largest Butoh Company - Dairakudakan founded by Akaji Maro. She had performed in every Dairakudakan production until 2019. She now heads the AGAXART production company for Butoh dancers and artists in Japan. Emiko is a recipient of the prestigious Best Young Artist 2015 Award by the Japan Dance Critics Association and she represented Japan in 2020 at the 39th annual Battery Dance Festival in New York City, USA.
https://agaxart.wixsite.com/agart/home
@emiko.agatsuma
Iza Kavedžija is an Assistant Professor of Medical Anthropology at the University of Cambridge. She is specialising in Japan, with primary research interests in art and creativity, the life course and aging, and health and wellbeing. She is currently leading an AHRC-funded project entitled ‘
The Work of Art in Contemporary Japan: Inner and outer worlds of creativity’.
https://www.socanth.cam.ac.uk/directory/dr-iza-kavedzija
Translation and narration by Kaori Yoshikawa.