Kay Nishikawa, founder and Artistic Director of K2 Dance and Arts Co., is an internationally recognized multimedia performing artist. Born in Kobe, Japan, she first studied choreography at the Nesta Brooking School of Ballet in England before moving to New York City and developing artistically under the guidance of teachers such as Melissa Hayden, Alfredo Corvino and Merce Cunningham. Her philosophy and vision developed through the mentorship of and ensuring partnership with Simone Forti, with whom she shared an admiration for Saburo Murakami, founding member of Gutai (the first Japanese avant-garde movement) and Nishikawa’s kindergarten teacher. Nishikawa has performed in local New York City churches, warehouses, a missionary house, galleries and museums, as well as internationally in Canada, Germany, Mexico, France, England and Japan. Her work has been described as creating “movement like a sculptor, visualized images like a poet, colors the scenes like a painter, and flows like an abstract chord." Nishikawa holds a Master’s Degree in Dance Education from New York University.
K2 Dance & Arts is a Brooklyn based arts collective founded in movement. Our mission is to reveal movement as a means of communicating untold/unconscious ideas on the human condition, rather than merely an aesthetic visual stimulus.
To create works, we use a process of structured improvisation based on five-sense awareness, using all mediums of art as inspiration. In a sense, we are always in creation in any rehearsal, as we continuously work to use our surroundings to gather movement vocabulary. Once we begin to structure a piece, Kay finds a thread, an idea, that will guide the piece. The guiding thread transforms into different physical iterations, which turn into a narrative structure. We often rehearse outdoors to turn ideas into stories and enhance our movement vocabularies. Throughout the process, dancers are collaborators not only in movement creation but also in verbal conversation about the direction of the piece.
