New Work by Benjamin Akio Kimitch
New Work by Benjamin Akio Kimitch
Benjamin Akio Kimitch
Benjamin Akio Kimitch
Director and choreographer Benjamin Akio Kimitch creates a fantasy Japanese American court dance. It explores the collision of global cultural movements which shaped Japanese American identity in the time between the 1945 Hiroshima bombing and the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. Commissioned to premiere in New York City in late-2026, this and subsequent U.S. touring will be accompanied by a public symposium framework and a companion publication. Together, these elements offer accessible spaces for audiences to unpack the work’s layered influences: postwar Japanese art, U.S. soft power, and Japanese American incarceration.
At the heart of this project is Bugaku, the ancient dance form of Japan’s 1000-year-old Gagaku performance tradition. Kimitch will explore its introduction to America after World War II, notably a tour by the Imperial Household musicians at New York City Center in 1959 and a ballet by George Balanchine in 1963. Balanchine’s ballet, simply titled Bugaku, is a highly erotic, orientalist work that overlooks the nuanced, transnational, and spiritual qualities of Japan’s Bugaku. This juxtaposition sets the stage for Kimitch’s exploration of post-war and post-incarceration Japanese American life, reflecting on the intersection of art, memory, and imagination, and how they transform under external pressures. Ultimately, this project is an exploration of contradiction. Throughout, Kimitch will lean into the disorientation and tensions of his own mixed identity and influences. The project doesn’t intend to provide neat answers but instead surfaces necessary questions about lineage, power, and creative form, activating a constellation of perspectives to push forward contemporary discourse and artistic practice.
Dance, Performing Arts
2026
About Benjamin Akio Kimitch
Brooklyn, NY
Benjamin Akio Kimitch is an award-winning artist and producer based in Brooklyn, NY. He is the recent recipient of a National Dance Project Production Grant, an Asian Cultural Council Fellowship, and a New York Dance and Performance Bessie Award for Outstanding Choreographer. Kimitch’s work has been commissioned and presented at New York Live Arts, The Shed, The Kitchen, Danspace Project, The Noguchi Museum, and Princeton University. He has been awarded artistic residencies at MacDowell, Yaddo, MANCC, Movement Research, and others. Since 2022, he has collaborated with choreographer Yasuko Yokoshi in an ongoing, international research project in the U.S. and Japan. Kimitch also brings to his artistic work over 15 years of experience as a professional producer, currently as the Producer for new opera, music, theater, and dance at Perelman Performing Arts Center, including Huang Ruo and David Henry Hwang’s Grammy-nominated opera An American Soldier and the Broadway-bound production of CATS: The Jellicle Ball .
Benjamin Akio Kimitch is an award-winning artist and producer based in Brooklyn, NY. He is the recent recipient of a National Dance Project Production Grant, an Asian Cultural Council Fellowship, and a New York Dance and Performance Bessie Award for Outstanding Choreographer. Kimitch’s work has been commissioned and presented at New York Live Arts, The Shed, The Kitchen, Danspace Project, The Noguchi Museum, and Princeton University. He has been awarded artistic residencies at MacDowell, Yaddo, MANCC, Movement Research, and others. Since 2022, he has collaborated with choreographer Yasuko Yokoshi in an ongoing, international research project in the U.S. and Japan. Kimitch also brings to his artistic work over 15 years of experience as a professional producer, currently as the Producer for new opera, music, theater, and dance at Perelman Performing Arts Center, including Huang Ruo and David Henry Hwang’s Grammy-nominated opera An American Soldier and the Broadway-bound production of CATS: The Jellicle Ball .