Kiori Kawai (Japanese, b. 1978) is a dance performer/choreographer, interactive installation artist and an educator.

As a dance performance artist, she seeks to merge her body and coexist within nature and all environments. Started her career in New York, she has worked with Carman Moore/Skymusic Inc., Elaine Summers Dance and Film, Lincoln Center, Tribeca Performing Arts Center, Brooklyn Museum, Serraves Contemporary Museum (Portugal), Mesa Arts Center (AZ), Transformation Festival (Denmark/U.S), Megaron (Athens, Greece), touring nationally and internationally. She’s built up her own improvisatory movement vocabulary based on the techniques of meditation, Kinetic Awareness, Contact Improv, yoga, and various dance/movement trainings. This led her to designing interactive installations that include human body movement within kinetic sculptures.

Her approach to teaching Contact Improvisation and improvisational dance performances is based on developing awareness and exploring our conscious/unconscious choices through physical interaction between self and others. She has taught at New York University-Abu Dhabi (UAE), Alpine Dance Academy/Wave Festival (CO, USA), Tinkuy (Copenhagen, Denmark), Wrong Movement Studio (Athens, Greece), New England Dance Camp (New Hampshire, USA), Transformation Festival (U.S.A Denmark), Deakin University/Federation Square (Melbourne, Australia), Savannah Arts Academy/ Telfair Museums (GA, USA), Dancing Water (TX, USA), Azule Dance Theater (NY, USA), Rinyou Temple (Japan) and more.

** Kiori has been one of the founding members of NDC, and her contribution has been essential to our work. However, at the moment she is inactive within the Collective as she is focusing on other important things in her life. We honor her as essential part of the history of this Collective.