Ikuyo Kuroda
Ikuyo Kuroda
After joining the famous Tani Momoko Ballet Company at the age of six, Ikuyo Kuroda continued to study classical ballet all through her school and college years. It was a term of study in London at the Laban Centre during college that sparked her interest in contemporary dance and eventually led her into this genre. In 2000 she became a dancer with the contemporary dance company “Kim Itoh + the Glorious Future (Kagayaku Mirai)” and performed in many productions in Japan and abroad. In 2002 she made her debut as a choreographer with the work SIDE-B that subsequently won the National Committee Award of the Yokohama Platform of Rencontres Chorégraphiques Internationales de Seine-Saint-Denis (successor to the present “Bagnolet” International Choreography Award. In April of the same year she started the all female dance company BATIK. In 2003 she won the Excellence Prize at the SPAC Dance Festival 2003 organized by the Shizuoka Performing Arts Center the grand prize at the Toyota Choreography Award 2003, namely “the New Generation Choreographer Award.” In 2004 she won the 4th Asahi Performing Arts Award and the Kirin Dance Support Award for directing, choreographing and performing in her works Hana wa Nagarete, Toki wa Katamaru and SHOKU. In this way she established herself as a choreographer of renown within a very short time from her debut. Her other choreographed works include AURA and Last Pie.