Mitsuaki Kudo

Mitsuaki Kudo

President and CEO of Just-Be Co., Ltd.
Legend Tokyo is a street dance competition that has been held since 2011. What makes it unique is that it is a choreography contest in which a number of choreographers who have been selected after preliminary rounds choreograph dance shows (no longer than 5 minutes in performance length) using dancers they have chosen through open auditions, and with these pieces they compete against each other in the final competition for the title of best work (called the “Legend”). In 2017, the finals were contested by 20 compositions by the same number of choreographers and the winner was the choreographer avecoo with his powerful work on the subject of LGBT using 39 dancers. The two days of performances for the competition drew a total audience of nearly 10,000, and the winner is decided on the basis of ranking of the works performed with 1st to 5th place rankings of the top five by both the jury panel, made up of representatives from the entertainment industry and producers, and audience votes, with the judging criteria being whether the works are ones that can be enjoyed by anyone and whether they move people (all jury and audience judging results made public). Until now, the Legend Tokyo competition has introduced artists who are now widely active in the general performing arts scene, such as the winner of the 1st Legend Tokyo competition, Tatsuya Hasegawa (DAZZLE) and the 2nd Legend winner, Umebou (General direction: Imajin Itoh). But now, Legend Tokyo has become the biggest event of the street dance scene, and the driver behind it all along has been Mitsuaki Kudo President/CEO Just-Be Co., Ltd. as the publisher of the free paper SDM (Street Dance Magazine).