Akira Uchida
ARTIST BIO
Akira Uchida is a dancer, choreographer, creative director and teacher, originally from Ottawa, Canada. Now based in New York, Akira has presented work at the Capezio Ace Awards, Battery Dance Festival, Boulder Dance Film Festival and created work for the Joffrey Ballet School and the Clyfford Still Museum in Denver. He has danced on television programs such as Canada’s Got Talent, Degrassi, The Strain, Over the Rainbow and Canada’s Smartest Person and has choreographed music videos for artists such as HAAI, Lights, Ria Mae and Tyler Shaw. Akira is currently a faculty member as a contemporary teacher on JUMP Dance Convention, for which he travels across North America making his influence on the upcoming generation of dancers with his progressive teaching style. Outside of his time working on projects in NYC, Akira is a board member and head of the Mentorship Program at Share The Movement, a non-profit
dedicated to uplifting and providing opportunity to young BIPOC dancers. Akira continues to train, research and perform with curiosity and excitement about how his craft will continue toevolve.
ARTIST STATEMENT
Dance represents a method for exploring and bringing life to deeper insights that aren’t always available through language – insights stored in the body of our past experiences, emotions and feelings. Movement is currently the main medium of expression for my work, though I’m actively exploring how it can intersect with other creative mediums such as film, animation, fashion and photography. My movement lives within a certain recognizable style, combining elements of flow, rhythm, groove, and contrasting between effortless qualities and extreme tension and resistance. I tend to incorporate groove into my movement as it represents to me a universal language of dance. I like to honour the middle space; the space between two opposing ideas, or even the space of convergence between many different ideas. This middle space helps me explore the
tension in queer experience, mixed-race identity, masculinity and femininity, and broader questions about time and evolution.
