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 training.

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.
http://kiorikawai.com

Originally stemming from a ballet background, Concetta has realigned her focus training in contemporary dance and obtained a BA in Dance Studies at the School of Performing Arts, University of Malta, jointly with an Erasmus program at the BCDA – Budapest Contemporary Dance Academy.
Her previous background in Building Engineering-Architecture have provided her with a passion for architecture and design, which enriches her approach to dance and space composition. Drawing from this, in 2018, she started ‘Archi-Humans Go Public’, a research project that puts in conversation dance and public spaces, funded by Arts Council Malta.
In recent years, she has embraced a nomadic path that leads her to travel to different geographic and interior places, and that initiated her into a deeper exploration of the self, of personal development through meditative and somatic practices, and Contact Improvisation.
She is co-founder of Sirius Dance Collective (2019) with Laura Kuukkanen (Finland) and Aline Zora (New Caledonia), with whom she produced two scenic works: “Connection” (2020); and “Spirited” (2020).
She is part of the Co-Creation Center, a multidisciplinary research group aiming to develop a methodology and a model of Conscious Co-Creation in order to accompany teams (both in the performing arts and in business) towards the manifestation from the source by accessing the unified field.
For two consecutive years she worked as dance assistant for Opening Doors Malta, an artistic association, working with adults with learning disabilities.
As dancer, Concetta has performed various works by Gil Kerer, Willi Dorner, Marie Keiser-Nielsen, Azul Teatro Company, La Fura dels Baus Company, Contact Dance Company, and others.
As an emerging dance creator, she choreographed “I Cannot Walk Around My Body, I Cannot Leave It Behind” for 5 dancers (2018); her own solo research “PRIMA MATERIA: A Study On My Bodies” (2019-20); the solo “Non-Linear Body/ies” for the company ZfinMalta Dance Ensemble (2020); and co-created with the Lentua Collective ’21 “A Nature Corner” commissioned by Joutsentanssi Festival, Finland (2021).
In 2021, she directed and produced her first independent short film “GIRGENTI – Timeless Dances On The Hill” for and with 3 dancers.
As a teacher, she started holding contemporary dance classes and workshops in various countries mainly Malta, Italy, Georgia and Finland, and taught contemporary ballet at the Nytke Contemporary Dance Festival (Finland) for three consecutive editions. She was a resident teacher at Gomarduli retreat center, Georgia.
She has now co-created Nomadic Dance Collective: a collective of teachers – with Adam Koan (USA) and Kiori Kawai (Japan) -with whom she organizes workshops in nature, completely dedicated to the research and refinement of the performative act, of a hybrid matrix combining the different sectors of work of the collaborators: Butoh, improvisation and CI, and contemporary dance.
In her contemporary dance classes, she offers a space where to cultivate and nurture the physical, emotional and mental bodies using a combination of improvisation, games, floorwork, and set phrases in order to challenge: the physical body in terms of coordination, strength and elasticity of the movement; the emotional and mental body in its fluctuations as an ongoing inquiry of our inner states. Her contemporary dance classes are integrated with some elements from meditation practices, somatic principles, stressing the importance of the breath within the movement, the sound, the playfulness, and the use of weight in relation with the floor.
She says about dance: “I strongly believe that movement is a metaphor for life, and it is through movement that I am learning who I truly am. By learning who I am through dance, I can broaden my view on what relationship with others is, and what life is. I trust that dance can connect us back to our body, to our essence, to re-learn that we are the creators of our reality, and to take back the power of ownership and freedom for our lives.”
She is certified Reiki practitioner; and LIFE AWARENESSTM certified breathwork instructor.
www.mariaconcettacariello.com

Adam Koan is a half Colombian half Venezuelan-American, raised in the small town of Belleview, Florida who has toured the world performing, teaching, and writing about Butoh. He has taught butoh at Stoa on three separate retreat programs during winter of 2021. He is a former facilitator at Himalaya Subbody Butoh and was curator for the 2-week Serbia Butoh Retreat 2019. In his early dance history, he was classically trained in Ballet and Modern Dance.

To Adam, butoh is a means to re-adopt the body and to break out of various limiting habits modern society has thrusted upon our bodies and spirits. The body is an enigma and an entire universe full of wonder, and both surface and shadow are made to eventually dance together in harmony.

Adam’s butoh guiding draws upon a multitude of exercises and perspectives that emphasize the body-mind connection, improvisation, imagination, shamanic motifs, and unlearning. It may be a rich resource for dancers, actors, performance artists, body workers, athletes, psychologists, and more.

Clear instruction is emphasized. The guiding cultivates individual deep creation within and is crafted in such a way that both beginners and experienced practitioners can gain material to construct a personal Butoh body. No experience of any prior discipline needed.

Since 2016, Adam has instructed approximately 750 hours of butoh in the following countries: USA, Mexico, Georgia, Turkey, Ukraine, Czech Republic, Germany, Serbia, Hungary, Spain, Finland, Italy, India, Greece, and Israel.