About: Debby Kajiyama

Debby Kajiyama is a San Francisco Bay Area native, and has been performing here since 1994. Her interests lie in the intersection of performance, cultural studies, and social change. She has performed with Dandelion Dancetheater, Anne Bluethenthal and Dancers, June Watanabe in Company, the Dance Brigade, and Somei Yoshino Taiko Ensemble. She is a member of TsukimiKai, an intergenerational group of artists, activists, and scholars that travels to Cuba to share Obon Festival folk dances and music, and to conduct oral histories of the Japanese Diaspora in Cuba. Debby is the recipient of a Djerassi Artists Program residency and a Silicon Valley Community Foundation fellowship. Last year, she studied Taiko intensively with master teacher Hiroyuki “Jimi” Nakagawa through an Alliance for California Traditional Arts Apprenticeship grant. For the past thirteen years, Debby has directed Navarrete x Kajiyama Dance Theater (NAKA) with co-conspirator, José Navarrete. NAKA creates interdisciplinary performance works using movement, theater, art installation, multimedia and site-specifi c environments.

Articles by Debby Kajiyama:

• Speak: Still With Us by Debby Kajiyama, April 2014 Apr 01, 2014