Performance Dates & Times
Friday, January 9 at 6:30pm

Saturday, January 10 at 2pm and 8pm

Sunday, January 11 at 12:30pm

Content Warning: This show contains partial nudity

kyoko takenaka i’m here & i love you

Director, Performer, Composer - Kyoko Takenaka  

Art Direction: Prisca Choe

Creative Doula: yuniya edi kwon

Photographer: Andre Shizen

Don’t miss the limited premiere of i’m here & i love you—Kyoko Takenaka’s raw, soul-stirring return to the NY stage since undergoing chemotherapy. Through butoh dance, visuals created on Yakushima Island, music, and lessons found in community care, this anti-disciplinary intimate solo performance threads rage, relief, and wonder—tuning into nature’s frequencies to broaden our relationship with the grief of the world. 

This work combines butoh dance, photography, video, and sound art to navigate the emotional landscape of their year during treatment and through recovery, and the profound lessons learned along the journey. The project envelops viewers in an exploration of grief, love, visibility, and power, illustrating how art can transform narratives for those at the intersections of sickness, disability, queerness, and the diaspora. Through experiences and reflections found in community care, the power of nature found on Yakushima Island, and ancestral rituals found in the body, i’m here & i love you invites viewers to a space at the convergence of healing and art.

About the Artist

KYOKO TAKENAKA (竹中響子)

Kyoko Takenaka is a director, filmmaker, butoh dancer, actor, musician, performance artist, and teacher based between Turtle Island and Japan. Centering their work in the in-between, they create work around diasporic longing as it relates to cycles found in nature, Japanese mythology, and the ethereal realm.

Their name means “vibrations of sound child” in Japanese.

Their work has been featured on Apple TV+, Hulu, Nowness, HBO, the LA Times, BOMB Magazine, and Far-Near; performed at Lincoln Center and venues around the world. Their self-directed short film, HOME, reached viral acclaim in 2021. They've released two collaborative albums, Planet Q, and Wastewomxn, centering themes of queer liberation and afro-asia unity with artists of the African and Asian diaspora.