by Daniella Pozo
Find out more about Daniella here.
Minami Kikuchi, a Japanese dancer, choreographer, and educator, seeks to ground her practice in accessible movement and universal connection. Her career began with ballet at the age of three and soon flourished into a space of leadership and collaboration. Whether she was preparing choreography for school competitions or fine-tuning her costuming and music choices, dance allowed Minami to build a universal vocabulary between the performer and the audience. Minami created "ONE" for the 2024 Choreography Project residency.
This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
What do you think is the difference between your roles as a teacher versus a choreographer?
When I’m teaching, I’m focusing on your flexibility, strength, the technique or quality of your movement. As a choreographer, I don't necessarily focus on their technique. Because when I cast you, that means I believe in you, believe in your technique. So I don't necessarily want to fix your technique. In the process of making a piece, I like to see every dancer’s voice.
During your time with Choreography Project, what was your process for choosing a theme and putting together the movements?
Choreography Project was my first professional “earning money” piece of my entire life so it was so much pressure. With “ONE” I really wanted to do something different. At first, I didn't think that much. And that's okay. In a creative process, if you think too hard, you can't really be creative, in my opinion. So I was like, just go for it. The first rehearsal was only improvising with the song because I just wanted to see how the dancers move. The second day I started choreography with a big theme, focusing on the idea of what connects us rather than what divides us.
I was thinking that I’ve never been involved in art activism with my dance and that’s something I wanted to try. I was lucky enough that, although I'm a woman from a different country, I felt I belonged to the community because I love dance and that’s something in common with other people. Sometimes people feel like, my gosh, I don’t belong here. That's a big issue. Even if you’re from here, the United States, if you speak a different language or have a different skin tone, people always talk about that difference. I feel like people never say “we have this thing in common or that in common.” But, we have so much similarity between humans and that’s what I wanted to focus on.
What was it like to work with a new community of people in Choreography Project?
I found out about the organization from Haley Andrews, she is on faculty at Urbanity Dance and I was her teaching assistant. I told her I could not find any opportunity in Providence that allowed me to choreograph. So she told me about it and said, this is an organization that is really healthy and supportive of women. I felt that maybe I'm too young for that because I’ve never choreographed people who are older and more expert in the dance world. But, I really appreciated the people and how they think. The people who work with Choreography Project want to have a healthy relationship with art, with the choreographing process, and with dancers, which inspired me a lot. It was not competitive in my piece or when I danced in other pieces, we were all on the same page no matter how many years you’ve been dancing.
How would you describe your style of dance?
I love movements that everyone can do. I want the movement to be so simple that people can feel a closer connection with the dancers. Because I think that when dancers do so many high kicks or whatever it creates distance. The first thing I always think about in a piece is to set a motif. That is a repetition the audience will remember at the center of my movement style. It expresses the most of what I want to communicate in my theme. Before I even start choreographing, I always think “my motif is something that my mom can do.” Those are my biggest concepts when I choreograph.
Why do you continue to dance?
My belief in dance is that it's a universal language. I strongly believe that because I came to the United States without English, only hi, thank you, nice to meet you. But you don’t need word language in order to understand the movement and that’s the most beautiful thing about dance.
You know, people dance. My mom can dance, in this world everyone can have their own movement and that’s something we can all have in common. That can inspire younger people too to use dance as a tool. When you move and they move, there is this connection and I want more people to think that way. I want to communicate with more people and that’s why I continue choreographing and continue dancing.
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Summary
Minami Kikuchi is a Japanese dancer, choreographer, and educator who works with movement as a form of connection. Her career as a dancer has grown from childhood ballet training to a space of leadership, learning, and collaborating. During her time with Choreography Project in 2024, Kikuchi developed the piece “ONE” which seeks to explore human commonalities that bind us together. Speaking about the development of this piece, she described a fluid creative process which allowed her to highlight the dancer’s individual strengths, reflect on her identity as a Japanese immigrant, and create moments of connection between the performers and the audience.