Yukina Sato

Yukina Sato is a Japanese dancer, choreographer, and filmmaker whose work explores the dynamic interplay of movement and storytelling. Her artistic practice delves into the liminal space of cultural hybridity, capturing the unique experiences of living between two countries and navigating overlapping cultural landscapes.

Yukina has collaborated with acclaimed performing artists and companies, including Abby Zbikowski (Abby Z + New Utilities), Carl Flink (Black Label Movement), Crystal Perkins (Dayton Contemporary Dance Company), Bebe Miller, and Diavolo – Architecture in Motion – among many others. As the co-founder of YY Dance+Media, she is passionate about creating multimedia performances that intersect live dance performance and technology. Her recent work, Motion of Seeing, premiered at the Detroit Dance City Festival and earned the National Exchange Award in 2023, leading to performances at the RAD Festival in 2024.

Yukina holds an MFA in Dance from The Ohio State University and a BFA in Dance Performance from the University of Central Oklahoma. Currently, she serves as an Assistant Professor of Dance at Minnesota State University, Mankato. In this role, she shares her passion for movement, creativity, and choreography with students.

My dance works aim to connect movers and viewers through visceral experiences, creating space for shared questions & stories.

Artist Statement

I create dance as a mean to share the embodied experience beyond cultural differences and personal histories, and to connect people viscerally. Growing up in Japan and building artistic career in the United States, the journey has shaped my understanding of how identity constantly evolves through movement, place, and human relationships. Every work I create reflects what I address at the time of my life and I seek the collaboration with dancers and audience to relate, reflect, and reveal through the movement what our body carries.

For me, dance is a subjective and embodied experience. Every work I create is rooted in my own life while inviting others to discover their own meanings within it. Rather than presenting a single interpretation, I seek to create space for audiences and collaborators to relate, reflect, and imagine through movement. I believe that the body carries memory, emotion, and history, and that movement can reveal connections that words often cannot.

My artistic practice explores how we build relationships through our moving bodies and inhabit the shared present moment together. Collaboration is at the heart of my creative process. Through deep listening, curiosity, and responsiveness, I work with performers as creative partners, valuing each individual’s experiences and perspectives. This mutual exchange shapes the work in ways that could not emerge from a single voice alone.

Whether creating for the stage, site-specific environments, or interdisciplinary projects, I am interested in cultivating spaces where vulnerability, trust, and curiosity allow genuine human connection to emerge. I hope my work invites people to encounter both themselves and one another with greater empathy, recognizing that our differences do not separate us but enrich the ways we move, create, and belong together.