︎
Mizuho Kappa
Dancer / Choreographer / Creative Director / Entomologist
“This is not a dance.
This is a hidden fight for humanity. This is an unheard voice of death.
This is endless mourning for slain warriors.”
- Mizuho Kappa
This is a hidden fight for humanity. This is an unheard voice of death.
This is endless mourning for slain warriors.”
- Mizuho Kappa
Bio
Mizuho Kappa is a dancer, choreographer, and creative director from Osaka, Japan with a degree in Entomology. She is currently a resident of McKittrick Hotel, performing in Punchdrunk’s Sleep No More, NYC. She is a founder of her own collaborative dance theater company Kappa InKahootz, as well as an assistant artistic director of PROJECT/TAG dance company. She has performed with Peridance Contemporary Dance Company, Yoshiko Chuma & The School of Hard Knocks, and LaneCo Arts, among others. Her multidimensional choreographic works include creations for DRIFT presented by SuperBlue and The Shed, for Hank Willis Thomas x Sacai 'LOVE OVER RULES', for The School of Hard Knocks presented by La MaMa, by Dixon Place, by Gene Frankel Theater and TheaterLab, for PROJECT/TAG presented by Kennedy Center and by The Brick. She has also been developing works with cross-disciplinary collaborators such as a neuroscience researcher, a transmedia playwright, a hybrid writer, and a choreographic researcher. Those works have been presented at New Museum, New York Hall of Science, Open Source Gallery, Grace Exhibition Space, City University of Hong Kong, House of Yes, and more. She was a resident artist of Experimental Film Virginia 2022, where she performed the main roles in and was involved in the creation process of two award-winning films, 'Devouring Stones Up Close' and ‘Sole', both of which premiered at Lincoln Center’s Dance on Camera Festival. For her, movement is a series of scientific experiments using space, time, and the body. The way she conveys narratives through these intricate and simultaneous scientific experiments has been described as 'Evoking and Unhinged' (Brooklyn Magazine) and ‘Potent’ (The New York Times).
Artist Statement
“This is not a dance. This is a hidden fight for humanity. This is an unheard voice of death. This is endless mourning for slain warriors.”
At 14 years old, I wrote a diary of routines imposed by my vengeful mother. My childhood was a wildfire that ended in ashes. I started creating choreographic works as a teenager, seeking a space to make peace with my own chaotic self. The savagery of wars unleashes pain and trauma in the intimacy of the home. War brutality and domestic violence are the main choreographic theme I explore. I try to free myself of the dance training to keep core authentic feelings, creative movements to surprise the audience and unique tableaux that will impact the public’s imagination. My ongoing choreographic work series ‘HER’ is a dance-doc based on my childhood diary. Nine women embody a Woman, a Mother, a Daughter perpetually punished to be born. My dance is conceived from a rage to survive, an inner fire and endless search for the light, a connection and love. I reinvent Japanese traditional dance, both spiritual and contemporary non-literal movements, to create a unique choreographic composition, a dance to expel/exorcize the violence through trance, repetition, dynamic pulse, and sacred rituals. I incorporate text. My work is a tapestry of intricately intertwined movement and text, abstract and narrative, past and future, reality and unreality.