Ayako Kato

Ayako Kato is a contemporary experimental choreographer/dancer, originally from Japan. Her work has been called “moving everyday sculptures, artfully cast in naturalness” (Luzerner Zeitung). Since 1998, her practice, Ayako Kato/Art Union Humanscape, is in deep collaboration with live music and grounded on the principles of fūryū (Japanese for “wind flow”), cyclical transformation, and human motion in nature. Ayako creates solo, large ensemble pieces, and movement installations. Kato received the Esteemed Artist Award 2022 from the City of Chicago, the 2021 Artist Fellowship Award in Choreography from the Illinois Arts Council, a 3Arts Fellow residency at Camargo Foundation (France), a 3Arts Award, the Trillium Arts 2021 ACE Fellowship in Dance (Asheville, NC), High Concept Labs Fellowships in 2021 and 2022 (Chicago), Best of Dance (Chicago Tribune), and See Chicago Dance. Her 2021 project, Inception: ETHOS Episode II, a nature-walk style dance/music installation performance supported by the City of Chicago, activated in a 34-acre park at the South Shore Cultural Center (along Lake Michigan). For 2022, she is working on “LUCA (the Last Universal Common Ancestor of all living things)/Res Communis: ETHOS Episode III” at Palmisano Park, a former quarry and now beloved Chicago Park District site, co-presented by High Concept Labs.

Projects:

• Claiming Space