BODY WEATHER LABORATORY

 Flower of the Season 2025

Dewflower つゆくさ(tsu yu ku sa)

Dance and live performance exist in a state of ephemerality — they arise in a moment and vanish in the same breath, leaving only memory in their wake.

Body Weather Laboratory presents Flower of the Season 2025 Dewflower. Continuing a 21-year tradition of minimal yet encompassing use of space and theatricality, this year’s performance will feature LA and NY choreographers/performers.

Four Solos

Kota Yamazaki

Morleigh Steinberg

Dan Kwong

Roxanne Steinberg

Friday, June 6, 8:00 PM

Saturday, June 7, 8:00 PM

Sunday, June 8, 3:00 PM

 Admission: $20 eventbrite

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Sunday June 8, 8:45am-11:15am

Master class with Kota Yamazaki

$40, Registration: bodyweather@gmail.com

This workshop kicks off with vocal techniques based on the Japanese idea of kotodama—the belief that words carry spiritual power—while combining voice and movement at the same time. We’ll explore different styles of vocalization, and some, like those used in Noh and Kabuki, can create really intense physical sensations. At the core of these practices are basic positions drawn from ancient martial arts, which we’ll then explore through improvised movement. After that, we’ll move into Yamasaki’s subtle movement phrases.

What makes this class unique is how it flows between embodiment and disembodiment, always exploring what new possibilities can emerge when we let go of fixed ways of being in the body.

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Artist biographies:

Born in Niigata, Japan, Kota Yamazaki (Choreographer) was first introduced to butoh under the teaching of Akira Kasai at the age of 18. Yamazaki is a recipient of the Bessie Award of 2007, Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists award of 2013, NYFA Fellowship of 2016, and Guggenheim Fellowship of 2018.Since 2019, Yamazaki has been a guest faculty member at Bennington College.in 2024, Yamazaki created a new piece “Thin paper, autonomous synapses, nomads, Tokyo(ing)” for Footnote NZ Dance company, which toured Japan and NZ (www.kotayamazaki.com)

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 Dan Kwong is an award-winning performance artist, playwright, director, and video producer. He has presented his work nationally and internationally since 1989, performing in more than 40 of the 50 United States and in China, Thailand, Cambodia, Indonesia, South Korea, Hong Kong, Mexico, England, and Canada. 

He is Associate Artistic Director of Great Leap, the multicultural performing arts organization founded by pioneering Asian American artist Nobuko Miyamoto. For GL he has facilitated workshops, directed performances, directed & edited environmental music videos, and performed throughout much of the U.S. with their touring productions. www.greatleap.org 

In the COVID-era Kwong turned to documentary video, produced two features released in 2021: He was Co-Executive Producer on Con Safos for KCET’s Artbound series, nominated for a Los Angeles-area Emmy and winning awards from LA Press Club and National Arts & Entertainment Journalism. He was Writer/Director/Editor for We Were All Here, a collaboration with Paulina Sahagun that explores 100 years of multicultural history in his Santa Monica neighborhood through the lens of one Mexican immigrant family. 

Since May of 2023 he serves as Director of the Manzanar Baseball Project: restoring the historic baseball field at Manzanar National Historic Site (where his mother was incarcerated during WWII) and staging a Fall doubleheader with top players from California's Japanese American baseball leagues dressed in custom 1940s style uniforms and playing with vintage equipment. www.mzbbp.org 

Kwong served on the Board of Directors of Highways Performance Space for 17 years and has been a Resident Mentor Artist at 18th Street Arts Center since 1992. Bats left, throws left. 

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A second-generation Angelino, Morleigh Steinberg’s artistic practice extends from a life-long exploration of movement. Throughout her life she has applied this practice to express her observations not only in dance, but in various art forms, understanding the fluid relation between artistic disciplines; finding freedom to create in many. Morleigh will always be a dance artist first, yet she has have come to work simultaneously as a lighting designer, filmmaker, photographer, creative consultant, and more recently, gallery director. She has made work for theaters, museums, galleries, in urban and wild site-specific locations, and for arenas, stadiums, and most recently the groundbreaking Sphere in Las Vegas as part of U2’s V-U2 shows. As dancer/choreographer, Morleigh has toured extensively worldwide with the dance companies Momix, ISO Dance and ARCANE Collective, whose work was presented at the Guggenheim Museum - NYC, The Hammer Museum, REDCAT – LA, and in various venues throughout Europe. Over the years she has shot and directed numerous award-winning short dance films, including the full-length documentary Height of Sky, and many music videos. She has been working with U2 as creative consultant and choreographer since 1993. 

In 2017, Morleigh, along with Frally Hynes, founded ARCANE Space in Venice, California, producing and presenting visual arts in a gallery setting. ARCANE Space nurtures and presents the work of a wide range of artists – those of note and those who may not otherwise have had opportunity to exhibit. Exhibits have traveled to Ireland and Cuba. She has created four visual art shows of her own work at ARCANE Space and has designed and published several books relating to exhibits presented in the space. 

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 Roxanne Steinberg dances to transcend familiar vocabularies and bring about a heightened sense of perception, connectivity, and flow of primordial associations. A graduate of Bennington College, she has taught Body Weather Laboratory since 1988. 

She performs worldwide as a soloist and with her partner Oguri, sister Morleigh Steinberg, and composers Yas-Kaz, Paul Chavez, Kenta Nagai, Tatsuya Nakatani, Leon Mobley, Myra Melford, Alex Cline, Pheeroan Aklaff, Motoko Honda, Will Salmon. She has worked with dancers Min Tanaka and Amagatsu of Sankai Juku, and artists Hirokazu Kosaka, Carole Kim and Bill Viola. Roxanne has taught at UCLA, Cal Arts, Cal State Los Angeles, Sci Arc, Pomona College, and Harvard Westlake, among others. She is artist-in-residence at the Electric Lodge in Venice. She is a 2020 DCA COLA Fellow.

Flower of the Season 2025 “dewflower” is made possible in part by City of Los Angeles, Department of Cultural Affairs, Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture, Body Weather Laboratory Individual donor and the Electric Lodge.