Kokoro Dance/KW Studios

Kokoro Dance was started in 1986 by Barbara Bourget and Jay Hirabayashi with a mandate to redefine the meaning of Canadian culture through teaching, producing, and performing new dance theatre with an emphasis on multidisciplinary collaboration and cross-cultural exploration.

Taking its name from the Japanese word kokoro — meaning heart, soul, and spirit — Kokoro Dance creates deeply evocative, provocative, moving, and memorable performances. Inspired by the Japanese art form known as butoh, Kokoro Dance fuses the aesthetics of East and West. Butoh has its origins in post-World War II, when dancers Tatsumi Hijikata and Kazuo Ohno set out to explore dance at a primal, raw level. By producing and performing new dance theatre while emphasizing multidisciplinary collaboration and cross-cultural exploration, Kokoro Dance is reshaping the meaning of Canadian culture.

Together, Bourget and Hirabayashi have created more than 200 new works, including solos, duets, trios, and large ensemble pieces. Kokoro Dance has created and performed works for the proscenium theatre, site-specific environmental locations (including parks and streets), alternate venues such as restaurants and nightclubs, and schools with young audiences; the dynamic group has also done impromptu improvisations in jazz night clubs and has integrated dance with visual art and poetic theatre. Its signature Wreck Beach Butoh series has taken place annually for 26 years. The company has performed across Canada, in the United States, the Netherlands, United Kingdom, Germany, Poland, Lithuania, Japan, Cuba, Mexico, and Argentina.

Kokoro Dance prefers to perform to original live music. The group’s primary musical collaborator was the late Robert J. Rosen, who wrote the scores for signature works such as Rage, Sunyata, and the Sade Triology. Kokoro Dance also has commissioned scores from extraordinary Canadian composers such as Jeff Corness, John Korsrud, Lee Pui Ming, Tony Wilson, Jeffrey Ryan, and Barbara and Jay’s son, Joseph Hirabayashi. An essential element in the organization’s unforgettable stage works are Gerald King’s lighting designs. While Kokoro dancers may often perform in simple white body makeup and fundoshi’s (the Japanese word for loin cloth), the company turns to inventive designers Tsuneko Kokubo, Mara A. Gottler, Eleanor Hannan, and Loraie Tylor for other costumes.

In 2014, Kokoro Dance was unanimously approved by Vancouver’s City Council to become the primary leaseholder of 7,168 square feet in the Woodward’s Heritage Building in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside neighbourhood. The space occupies over three floors that include second-floor offices, a street-level studio that was formerly a café with access to the Woodward’s Atrium via sliding window doors, and a large basement production studio. After raising over $1 million for demolition, renovation, and the acquisition of specialized equipment — and after five and a half years of hard work — Kokoro Dance unveiled KW Studios.

KW Studios, at 351 Abbott Street, consists of two studios, both of which have sprung dance floors with state-of-the-art lighting and sound systems, as well as a recording studio. These dynamic and creative spaces can be used for dance, theatre, music, rehearsal, creation, production, and recording purposes; there are also capabilities for live-streaming performances globally. KW Studios has a specific mandate to provide spaces primarily to not-for-profits, DTES, Indigenous, and low-income arts groups at affordable rates.

Bourget and Hirabayashi are also co-founders of the Vancouver International Dance Festival.