See Chicago Dance  presents

2026 Chicago Dance Month: NeighborhoodMOVES

DANCE EXCHANGE: GLOCAL [GLOBAL & LOCAL] COMMUNITY

IN MOTION

Tuesday, June 16, 2026 @ Instituto Cervantes

31 W Ohio St.
Free Admission

RSVP here

Panel Discussion from 6 pm

(see panelists below)

Film Screening & Talkback from 7 pm

(see film lineup below)

PERFORMANCE from 8 pm

(see featured artists/group below) 

and please catch

"Tell me or not"

Ayako will create and perform Tell me or not with Anniela Huidobro Castro, dance, Ji Hae Yepa-Pappan, dance, and Mabel Kwan, synth, as part of NeighborhoodMOVES presented by SCD's 2026 Chicago Dance Month

Also featured:
"Palash" by Surabhi Ensemble
 "Un/Rerooted" by Dani Oblitas
"Dream of Fish" by Enby Ballet
 "Tap Like That x Scat Like That" by 333

THE DANCE EXCHANGE: Glocal [Global/Local] Community in Motion
Created to give dance artists focused space to share their ideas and processes with an engaged audience, we invite you to join us for NeighborhoodMOVES. Each evening will feature a specially curated lineup of community workshops, cyphers, improvisation jams, panel discussions, dance film screenings, and more! 

NeighborhoodMOVES Schedule:

• June 8 | THE DANCE NETWORK: COMMUNITY CONVERSATIONS & COLLABORATIONS
   Collaboraction Theatre at Kimball Arts Center 
  1757 N Kimball Ave, Chicago, IL
   

• June 16 | DANCE EXCHANGE: GLOBAL & LOCAL COMMUNITY IN MOTION
   Instituto Cervantes 
  31 W Ohio St, Chicago, IL
   

• June 26 | CROSSCURRENTS: WHERE DANCE STYLES, IDEAS, AND ARTISTS MEET
   Logan Center for the Arts  
  915 E 60th St, Chicago, IL

NeighborhoodMOVES sessions’ details and schedule coming soon!

Click HERE to view more detailds of SCD's Chicago Dance Month

PARTNERSHIP:
Chicago Dance Month is presented in partnership with Navy Pier, Collaboraction Theatre at Kimball Arts Center, Instituto Cervantes, and the Reva & David Logan Center for the Arts.

Mabel Kwan, piano, & Ayako Kato, dance, will be presenting their free improvisation duo for 2 x 4 at Constellation Chicago on April 29, 8:30 pm. Come with your friend, and reserve your ticket HERE! Or get at the DOOR!

Informal Showing

Sat, Feb 14, 2 pm*

Free Admission

@ 1650 W Foster, 2nd floor, Chicago Danztheatre Ensemble Auditorium

*Please make sure to arrive on time. The door will be closed after 2 pm.

Performance by Russell Norris, Ryn Osbourne, Mo Less, Ricky Hedenstorm, Kim Gelman, and Ayako Kato

Become a “Conscious Observer” for our Quantum Entanglement (QE) through Dance informal showing on Sat, Feb 14, 2 pm @ 1650 W Foster, 2nd floor/Chicago Danztheatre Ensemble space! It’s been so fruitful to learn and discuss about QE and Quantum Physics & Mechanics through our own movements and body-mind awareness!! Please enjoy tea/hot chocolate with cookies during our post-showing dialogue!!

35th Annual Winter Solstice Evening Concert: Drake & Zerang/Hamid Drake 70th Birthday Celebration Concert

Come out on Monday, December 22, 8 pm @Constellation! Ayako will be one of the collaborative artists. Tickets available HERE. Also, check out their morning concerts and beyond Here!

Featuring: Joshua Abrams - contrabass; Jason Adasiewicz - vibraphone;
Lisa Alverado - harmonium; Tatsu Aoki - contrabass, shaman;
Jim Baker - piano, electronics; Zahra Baker - vocals; Tuli Bera - dance, movement; Hamid Drake - drums, percussion; Ayako Kato - dance, movement;
Kent Kessler - contrabass; Ben LaMar Gay- trumpet; Shanta Nurullah - sitar;
Mike Reed - drums; Mai Sugimoto - reeds; Ken Vandermark - reeds;
Michael Zerang - drums, percussion; Dave Rempis - reeds

PIANIST and A PARTNER PERHAPS EDITION 4

Mabel Kwan, piano kindly invited Ayako as her partner to join PIANIST and A PARTNER PERHAPS EDITION 4 on Sun, November 23 at Elastic Arts curated by Sharon Udoh. The duo will present Bach's Well Tempered Clavier (C & C# major and minor). So exciting to embody Bach with Mabel Kwan!! Other pianists featured for the evening are: Jim Baker, Erez Dessel, and Nolan Chin, partnering with Vincent Davis, Kim Alpert, and Kris Corsano.

Meier Achievement Award Foundation presents 2025 Art in Action Series

Art Union Humanscape Duo: Jason Roebke, double bass & Ayako Kato, dance

Sunday, June 1, 2025, 1 pm @ the Woman's Club of Wilmette,

930 Greenleaf Ave, Wilmette, IL 60091

Free Admission

Register HERE

Registration Recommended

The AUH duo has been active since 1998 and their music and dance performance is highly acclaimed on New York Times, Luzerner Zeitung, Switzerland, and beyond.

For a solid 1 hour, the duo invite you an ephemeral indivisible world of micro through macro, yin through yang, and any other oppositions you haven’t even given the names yet to coexist.

Since 1998, this duo has been presenting the non-hierarchical relationship of dance and music, and the best manner of coexistence through movement and sound. The piece encourages audience members to be active viewers, inviting them to experience unexpected realms of the complex system enriched with space, silence, and stillness. The physicality of music, the musicality of dance, and the constant merger of the two create the absolute moments which are fundamental and larger than humans can control along with the tangible and intangible, and all in between.

Tava-kaavi, Sun Mountain in Ute, will be honored by stories, dance, and music with hopes and dreams shared by members of the Native American Students Alliance (NASA) to balance ourselves and perceive a better common future on the land. The Heller Center for Arts and Humanities at the University of Colorado - Colorado Springs selected Ayako as a Spring 2025 Heller Fellowship Award recipient and has been supporting the new creation of storytelling dance ETHOS: Ways of the Wind to be presented as a work in progress.

Mint tea, blue corn cookies, and biscochitos related to Ute culture will be offered in the beginning. You will be invited to outdoors on the hilltop, so please dress accordingly. A reception and dialogue follow.

Heller Center for Arts and Humanities presents

Storytelling Dance

ETHOS: Ways of the Wind

Work-in-Progress

March 13, 2025, Door: 5:30 pm, Start: 6 pm

Collaborators:

Storytellers: Kylie Red Willow, Oglala Lakota; Shundeen Martin, Navajo; Miles Medina, Yo’eme/Tiwa/Lakota; Native American Students Alliance (NASA)

Yo’eme/Tiwa/Lakota Drummer and Singer: Miles Medina

Navajo Dance & Round Dance: Shundeen Martin

Dancers: Desiree Villanueva, Alex Wilson, Ryn Day, Ayako Kato

Shapes of Wind Score: Yiheng Yvonne Wu

Flute Music: Élise Roy

Wind Harp: Philip Blackburn

Special advisors: Marguerite Cantu, Southern Ute/Chiricahua Apache/Eastern Cherokee; Granddaughter to Chief Buckskin Charlie, Last Traditional Chief of Southern Utes of Colorado; Ilaheva Tua'one, Indigenous/Native American Studies and Storytelling professor

Cultural Advisor: Crystal Rizzo, Southern Ute Cultural Preservation Director

Choreography: Wind & Ayako Kato

Pulpit Rock with Wind Harps installed by Philip Blackburn

This project is presented as part of Heller Fellowship Series and Peak FreQuency Festival, and generously supported by Heller Center for Arts and Humanities & the Department of Visual and Performing Arts (VAPA) at the University of Colorado - Colorado Springs

Umwelt — soundscape and movement installation

Saturday, November 23, Open between 1:30-4:30 pm @ HAIBAYÔ, 1132 W Argyle St., Chicago, IL

Free Admission

Presented by ROMAN SUSAN

Join us for a project launch of Umwelt by Mark Alcazar Diaz. Umwelt presents an auditory journey through the alleyways of Chicago's Uptown neighborhood. Delve into an intricate urban ecology of sounds that define these corridors.
  
Through meticulous field recordings captured with a binaural microphone, Umwelt unveils the nuanced sonic landscapes of each alley, offering a glimpse into the unseen rhythms of daily life. From the rhythmic clatter of ventilation systems echoing against brick walls to the distant hum of traffic permeating the air, each sound serves as a thread weaving together the fabric of this urban environment.

During this launch event, visitors activate the mapped recordings through overlapping sound stations. Kinetic philosopher and dancer Ayako Kato will respond to the chance interactions throughout the afternoon. The launch event takes place HAIBAYÔ at 1132 W Argyle St on Saturday, November 23 from 1:30-4:30 PM – and the field recordings are accessible through the site 24/7.

Visit mark-a-diaz-umwelt.com to experience this work online. The site is intended for desktop or laptop interface. Headsets are recommended. Umwelt is a part of Navigations, a series of artist projects in and about public space.

*****
Mark Alcazar Diaz is an artist, curator, educator, and arts administrator. He works with various media, including video, drawing, and object making to examine migration, memory of place, and natureculture. Related to his interest in exploring the pedagogy of sites and objects, Diaz facilitates workshops for teachers, artists, and non-artists to collaborate and explore the intersection of making and learning.

Ayako Kato is a contemporary choreographer and dancer originally from Yokohama, Japan. Kato's dance seeks the way of being in relation to nature and illuminates the dignity of life in response to contemporary society. Kato has been awarded a United States Artist Fellowship, Sybil Shearer Fellowship at Ragdale, and Illinois Arts Council Artist Fellowship, among others. 

HAIBAYÔ is a creative initiative that aims to energize the historic Asia on Argyle corridor through innovative cross-cultural, multi-generational collaborations. 

Roman Susan celebrates and shares the work of artists in the Great Lakes region. We create cultural engagements that provide resources and paid opportunities for artists. We are Chicago-based. We are artist-led. We are experimental and learning. More details at romansusan.org.

HUNGRY BRAIN, Sat, 11/9, 9 pm

Reserve your seats HERE!

Tomas Fujiwara (drums) and Taylor Ho Bynum (cornet), with second set guests Ayako Kato and Rachel Bernsen(movement) and Jason Roebke (bass)

Over the past thirty years, over twenty-five albums and hundreds of gigs in dozens of different bands, drummer Tomas Fujiwara and cornettist Taylor Ho Bynum have developed one of the deeper levels of creative communication in the contemporary music scene - in groups under Fujiwara's leadership like Triple Double and Shizuko, ensembles led by Bynum including his Sextet, 9-tette, and PlusTet big band, and collective projects like Illegal Crowns (with Mary Halvorson and Benoit Delbecq) and the Thirteenth Assembly (with Halvorson and Jessica Pavone), and the Chicago meets NYC supergroup Living By Lanterns. Throughout this history, they've maintained their duo, which has released four albums: "True Events" (2007), "Stepwise" (2010), "Through Foundation" (2014), and "Notice" (2022). 

The first set will be Fujiwara and Bynum's first duo performance in Chicago in a decade. For the second set, they will be joined by dancers Ayako Kato and Rachel Bernsen and bassist Jason Roebke, to improvise in response to materials from Bill Dixon's Index - the first in a series of explorations into this composition with a variety of configurations that Bynum is organizing around Dixon's 2025 centennial. 

More Details: Please visit Hungry Brain Website

Ayako Kato and Jason Roebke

NANCY: I tell you I’ve been honing my foresight over the past few months, ever since my husband’s inauguration, and it’s getting stronger every day.
—Timothy David Rey, from ZIP!

Come to Zip! presented by Poetry Foundation. This timely play will share space you need to be that election week. Ayako choreographed two dance scenes performed by Wannapa Pimtong Eubanks & Anniela Hubidoro for this staged reading.

Secure your free admission spot at Eventbrite for Thursday, November 7, 6-7:30 pm; Talk Back: 7:30-8 pm

Written by Chicago poet Timothy David Rey, Zip! is a prophetic and ghostly timewarped drama about Nancy Reagan’s fervor for astrology, interlaced with a Black gay love story, set on the eve of the AIDS epidemic and the Reagan assassination attempt. The play runs approximately 90 minutes with no intermission.

Zip! is a 2023 semi-finalist for the Eugene O’Neill National Playwrights Conference. Further development occurred during the author’s time as a 2022 fellow in the playwriting cohort of the Lambda Literary Writers Retreat for Emerging LGBTQ+ Writers-Faculty Advisor, Jewelle Gomez. Zip! was given its second table-read as part of the 2021 End Of Play Program (hosted by the Dramatist Guild of America/ The 24 Hour Plays NYC).

Some of Rey’s other plays include White/House (Finalist, eta New Play Initiative, 2020), Gloria, The (Almost) Last Picture Show, and The Monologue Play: An Ongoing Work Exploring Race, Sex, Identity...And The American Myth (‘22,‘23 Changing Worlds/ Arts Work Fund Award Recipient).

Director: Roger Ellis

Cast: David Goodloe, Caren Skibell, Stephen Glaspie, Wannapa Pimtong Eubanks, Anniela Hubidoro, Donovan Session, and Saleem Hue Penny.

Production Team: Opening Graphic-Rob Riutta/ Ross Parsons, Choreography-Ayako Kato, Props-Julie Williams, Sound-Ayme Frye.

One day, Chad reached Ayako, and here we are! Come to let your mind play, float …, and land in space with us!!

Friday, October 25, 7 pm @ Bim Bom Studios, 5226 W Belmont Ave., Chicago, IL 60641

$10-15 Save your spot in advance HERE!

Performance by: Ayako Kato, dance + Chad M Clark, guitar; Carol Genetti, voice + Janna Lee, voice; Amanda Maraist, dance and Michael Macdonald, electronics

Reserve your Ticket Here

Breath/Carries/Ritual

by

Yiheng Yvonne Wu, Jennifer Torrence, Ayako Kato

Conceived by Yiheng Yvonne Wu and co-devised by all three performers, Breath/Carries/Ritual is a transdisciplinary exploration of “things we carry.” Grounded in the body and the breathing cycles of the performers, movement and sound become one another. Stories emerge of burdens, sundries, and things that push us forth.

For Three Sleepless Nights

by

Mabel Kwan, piano; Jason Roebke, bass; Ayako Kato, dance

JAM (Jason, Ayako, Mabel) trio

For Three Sleepless Nights is a trio by pianist Mabel Kwan, double bassist Jason Roebke, and dancer Ayako Kato. Their craft to pursue tranquility with the play of kinetic and sonic space, silence, and stillness generates a void for the flow of wind, gravity, and grace to come in.

Friday, December 15, 2023

Doors: 8:00pm/Show 8:30 pm

Constellation Chicago

3111 N Western Ave, Chicago, IL 60618

Reserve your Ticket Here

Tickets $20 door

 $5 - livestream

Sponsors

University of Colorado Colorado Springs, Visual and Performing Arts Department

University of Colorado President’s Fund for the Humanities

Artist Biographies

Yiheng Yvonne Wu is a composer and interdisciplinary artist whose work ranges from conventionally

notated pieces to staged experimental works. Interdisciplinary projects have incorporated ASL, poetry,

dance, and installation. Wu has received commissions from the La Jolla Symphony, Arraymusic,

Michael Mizrahi, Figmentum, and the Bardin-Niskala Duo, among others. Her music has been

performed by the MIVOS string quartet, a.pe.ri.od.ic, Bent Frequency, and Ensemble SurPlus and

featured in the WasteLAnd concert series, the University of Tennessee Contemporary Music Festival,

New Music on the Bayou, SoundSCAPE, and Aspen Music Festival. Collaborators have included

Jennifer Torrence, Ayako Kato, Bonnie Whiting, Jessica Aszodi, Rachel Beetz, Dustin Donahue, and

Todd Moellenberg. She was awarded the 2018 Judith Lang Zaimont Prize by the IAWM and the 5th

Mivos/Kanter String Quartet Composition Prize. She is Assistant Professor of Music at the University

of Colorado Colorado Springs. yvonnewu.com

Jennifer Torrence is a percussionist, performer, and artistic researcher based in Oslo, Norway.

Originally from the United States, she has performed and taught in a variety of contexts across the

entire globe. Much of her work is built upon deep collaborative processes with composers and artists

from various experimental practices. In addition to solo and collaborative projects she is a member of

the Norwegian ensemble, Pinquins. Her artistic research has been supported by the Norwegian

Academy of Music (NMH) and the Stockholm University of the Arts. She holds a PhD in Artistic

Research from NMH and the Norwegian Artistic Research Programme. Jennifer is Associate Professor

II of percussion at the Norwegian Academy of Music. For more information

see www.jennifertorrence.com

Pianist Mabel Kwan is fascinated by sounds, contradictions, and our perception of what is familiar or

strange. She is a founding member of Ensemble Dal Niente, Restroy, Mega Laverne and Shirley, Fifth

Season, and Honestly Same. A native of Austin, Texas, her interest in art and music began at an early

age when she started accompanying her father on lieder, arias, and Chinese folk songs. Mabel is

a 2017 3Arts Awardee, 2018 High Concept Labs Artist, and 2020 City of Chicago Esteemed Artist.

mabelkwan.com

The diversity of Jason Roebke’s musical associations make him one of the most sought after

bassists, composers, and educators in Chicago and beyond. He composes music that is extreme in

its pairing of silence and explosive gestures. His music is rooted in jazz and takes inspiration from

experimental music, noise, and improvisation. Solo performance and a duo with dancer Ayako Kato

are also at the forefront of his creative activities. As a double bassist, his playing is intensely physical,

audacious, and sparse. The Chicago Reader described his work as “a carefully orchestrated rummage

through a hardware store.” Roebke studied privately with saxophonist and composer Roscoe Mitchell

as well as legendary double bass pedagogue Stuart Sankey. In 2009, he was awarded the Fellowship

in Music Composition from the Illinois Arts Council. Roebke tours widely in the US and Europe.

jasonroebke.info

Please visit Ayako’s profile HERE

Swiss artist Sabina Oehninger creates these colorful gentle touch towel tapestry pieces which allows you to feel, “It’s okay.” Jason Roebke, double bass, and Ayako Kato, dance, are honored to be invited to perform with these pieces as part of Sabina’s exhibition, Soft Skills, at Comfort Station on Sun, July 9 from 4 pm (Rain date: Saturday, July 15 @ 4 pm). Free Admission.

Art of Being

Dance/Movement Workshop with Ayako Kato

2023 Spring: Freestyle Inside Out

INFORMAL SHOWING! + Dialogue
Sat, May 27, 2 pm, Free Admission
Hamlin Park Fieldhouse Theater Studio, 3035 N Hoyne, 2nd floor.  + also on Zoom, please RSVP furyuayajp (at) gmail.com to receive a link.

Art of Being: Freestyle Inside Out participants: Russell Norris, Mary Willmeng, Emily Becket, Anne Shook and more would like to invite you to the end-of-session showing!! We have been discussing the issues/darkness that we are carrying as contemporary individuals,ethical individualism,how to embody the intangible, and beyond while we are constantly seeking out grounding and flying. 

Art Union Humanscape Duo

Jason Roebke, double bass & Ayako Kato, dance

Sat, December 3, 8:30 pm @ Constellation as part of 2 x 4

Admission: $10 Buy Tickets

Reaching nearly 25 years in collaboration, Art Union Humanscape (AUH) Duo, Ayako Kato, dance & Jason Roebke, double bass, creates a sonic and kinetic landscape meditatively superimposed with silence and stillness.

Photo by Ricardo Adame

“We all  flocked and trusted, and followed each other, leading ourselves,  

leaning 

and following in a way leaves and plants do in the wind. …

And we thought about why we dance,

why we are spiritual, why we move and for what and for whom we move.”

— “Through Dance, For Dance, We Dance: Offering and Receiving: A Reflection About ETHOS III, A Performance at Palmisano Park” Review by Maya Odim (Elevate 2022 Festival Writer), Chicago Dancemakers Forum Blog, 28 December, 2022

Watch EHTOS III: LUCA/Res Communis 5 minute excerpts

Watch Full Length “ETHOS III: LUCA/Res Communis”

Program

& ETHOS Journey Map & Time Schedule

Read more about ETHOS Project

Visit: Virtual Performance Map created by Mallory Qiu

11 am - 1:30 pm & 3 pm - 5:30 pm @ Palmisano Park

2850 S Halsted, Chicago (CTA: Orange Line, Halsted Sta.; Halsted #8 Bus to 27th St. or 29th St.)

Free Admission

Dance Installation & Performance Running Time: 150 minutes

Reservations encouraged (yet, not crucial) and open around mid-September with information on accessibility at chicagodancemakers.org

Presented by Elevate Chicago Dance Festival in partnership with the Chicago Park District; Produced by High Concept Labs in Joint Residency with the Monira Foundation at Mana Contemporary

“A compelling combination that simultaneously embraces both the molecular and the cosmic; ‘ETHOS’ is a feat made possible through an abundance of integrity evident in Kato’s work that embodies a gentle power and divine beauty paralleled only by nature itself.”

—Allen, Sophie. “In communion with nature, 'ETHOS' a moving reminder about stewardship.” on Inception: ETHOS Episode II, See Chicago Dance, 14 October, 2021

LUCA/Res Communis: ETHOS Episode III at Palmisano Park is part of the ETHOS project by Ayako, that sets art practice in natural environments. Episode III draws on the land’s history as the quarry that built modern Chicago, acknowledges the past, present, and future Indigenous people living among us, and is created in collaboration. It is organized as timed dances, land and water acknowledgements, and a culminating circle. Visitors choose to be guided by docents, or roam on their own.

Titled after the “Last Universal Common Ancestor”, and the common elements necessary for human life on Earth (air, water, soil), it follows To the Shore: ETHOS Episode I (2019), which used the setting of the beachfront and Colvin House at North Sheridan Road, and Inception: ETHOS Episode II (2021), set on the beach and prairieland behind the South Shore Cultural Center.

ETHOS Guidance Performers: Susana Ollin Kuikatl Tekpatzia Bañuelos (Aztec Nahua, vocal-music artist and storyteller, Aztec Dance Chicago), Joseph Lefthand (of Cheyenne-Arapaho, Taos, Zuni descent, performer), Danielle Gallet (water storyteller), Ambrosio Martinez (music, Aztec Dance Chicago).

ETHOS Team LUCA Dancers: Tuli Bera and Darling Squire (Team LUCA Co-Leaders), and Sophie Allen, Silvita Diaz Brown, Angela Gronroos, Carla Gruby, Lydia Jekot. 

Costume by: Darling Squire

Directed and choreographed by: Ayako Kato.

LUCA/Res Communis: ETHOS Episode III is generously supported by High Concept Labs, the Chicago Park District, the Reva & David Logan Foundation, 3Arts, Artist Communities Alliance, Montalvo Arts Center, the Chicago Moving Company, the Chicago Art Department, and an Individual Artists Program Grant from the City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs & Special Events.

Friday, June 10 @ High Concept Labs, 7 pm

2233 S. Throop, 4th floor (MANA CONTEMPORARY)

ADMISSION FREE

RSVP HERE

ETHOS performers and Ayako are excited to invite you to a sneak peek of LUCA/Res Communis: ETHOS Episode III on Friday, June 10, 2022 at High Concept Labs (HCL) from 7 pm. Supported by HCL, ETHOS III is taking off to provoke and practice new contemporary nature-centric ETHOS. This aesthetic and physical inquiry seeks out a new community building on the common ground, even further tracing back to LUCA, the Last Universal Common Ancestor of all living things. 

Acknowledging humans as a part of transformative and cyclical nature and the nature itself, ETHOS Episode III is reflecting on intersections of humanity through its past, present and future. Res Communis or Commons, the natural elements which are considered as necessary resources for all humankind to live such as air, water, and soil on the earth as habitat, are acknowledged through the ceremonial movement work along with Native American, Aztec traditions and contemporary water conservation/restoration approaches.  

Prior to the presentation at Palmisano Park in October, please join us to witness the ETHOS creative process and dialogue on how humans as urban residents can keep practicing to drop invisible walls beyond differences and work together.

ETHOS Dancers: Tuli Bera, Darling Squire, Sophie Allen, Silvita Diaz Brown, Angela Gronroos, Carla Gruby, Lydia Jekot

ETHOS Guidance Performers:

Joseph Lefthand, Movement Land Acknowledgement

Susana Ollin Kuikatl Tekpatzin Bañuelos, Aztec Dance, Music, & Singing

Danielle Gallet, Water Acknowledgement

ETHOS Musician

Susana Ollin Kuikatl Tekpatzin Bañuelos, Aztec Music

Ambrosio Martinez, Aztec Music