Flower of the Season 2025
Dewflower
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.
graphic design + illustration by: Kio Griffith
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
Friday, June 6. 8:00 PM
Morleigh Steinberg
“Before Never, Swing”
In the pause between flight and fall,
the quiet present,
still, unstuck,
and time
to notice,
to begin again—together.
Words and Dance- Morleigh Steinberg
Thank you, Jamie Burris, the Oguri Family, and the many Los Angeles parks for still having swing sets.
Kota Yamazaki
“A Wildflower Like Blue Paper Petals”
It’s like trying to recall a memory you’ve already remembered once before.
A blue wildflower that blooms everywhere, all the time—and yet, I can’t help but look at it.
There’s a sense of childhood familiarity, and yet, an unreadable expression.
I speak to the flowers in falsetto, and they never question its meaning—a quiet, honest simplicity.
As they all begin to bloom at once, surrounded by countless buds, it feels as though they are declaring:
We have come from the future.
And when the final bud is just about to finish blooming, the goldenrods arrive, and the season gently shifts into autumn.
-intermission-
Dan Kwong
“Return of The Samurai Centerfielder”
Resilience is in our nature as humans. Past, present, and whatever is to come.
Dan is overflowing with gratitude for his wonderful friends and family, especially sisters Barbara, Maria, and niece Hana, who supported him with such loving care and generosity over the last three weeks. Also big thanks to Colleen Miyano (wheelchair); Zoe Huber Lewis (video documentation); Aaron Rapoport (photography); Page Leong (directorial consultant); Lucy Solomon (emotional care); Doctors Srikureja, Brara, Powers (my life); and Oguri, Roxanne & the Artists of Dewflower for their kindness and flexibility. I am blessed.
Dedicated to Mom.
Roxanne Steinberg
"20/20"
Notepaper-pain,
besnowed, oversnowed:
in the calendargap
he's cradled, he's cradled
by the newborn
nothing.
Merkblätter-Schmerz,
beschneit, überschneit :
in der Kalenderlücke
wiegt ihn, wiegt ihn
das neugeborene
Nichts.
By Paul Celan
Translation by Pierre Joris
Special thanks to the DCA L.A.: COLA Fellowship 2020, Oguri, Zenji, Keiden, Robin Flicker, Melinda Ring, my grandparents, my mother and father, Paul Chavez, Corrine Kovarsky and all my dance teachers, and all my relations
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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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.
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Flower of the Season 2025 DEWFLOWER staff
Music: Zenji
Lighting: Keiden Oguri, Morleigh Steinberg, and Adam Bahir
Artistic director: Oguri
Video and Still documentation: Theo Rasmussen
Box office, House manager: Livia Reiner
Special thanks: Joel Shapiro, Kent Jenkins and Electric Lodge
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.