Ayane Nakagawa has always been in the minority in some ways. Bisexuality aside, she started her dance career learning both ballet and traditional Japanese dance, a rarity when it comes to students of either.

“My home also banned watching TV when we ate, and I wasn’t allowed to play video games or read manga either. So I often felt like I couldn’t connect with my friends in conversation,” the Japanese dancer told a crowd through a translator in the post-show discussion to her group’s performance at the San Francisco International Arts Festival.

Nakagawa, founder of Suichu-megane∞, translated this perspective to the larger theme of finding a way to coexist between the individual and society.

“The concept of balance is very important in my works. I really emphasize the balance between myself and others, because you can’t really know where you stand on something when it’s just you,” Nakagawa told the Nichi Bei News in Japanese.

“Whether you’re a minority or a majority, what’s important is figuring out how you can find balance with the people around you.”

Nakagawa, along with fellow dancers Shimpei Nemoto and Aeju Kim, traveled to San Francisco to perform in the U.S. premiere of their work May 9 at the festival. The trio first performed “my choice, my body,” a piece which incorporates elements of classic Japanese dance and noh theater. Following the first piece, Nakagawa performed her solo piece “Anchor,” a more comical piece that reflects on societal norms and pressures.

The trio moved somewhat eerily wearing noh masks in the first piece, until Nakagawa removes her own, contorting her face as if exploring her ability to emote with her facial muscles for the first time. While the movements appear radically different from what is typically seen in Japanese classical dance and perhaps even inspired by Nakagawa’s experience in street dancing as well, Nakagawa assured the movements came from Nihon buyo.

“I often get told that the movements look ‘kinda street’ — from people who don’t know me — but in reality that movement comes from traditional dance,” she said. “That’s actually close to a movement called ‘lowering the waist,’ and I wonder if people are mixing it up on their own, or if it changes based on the person watching, or if there’s some kind of physical connection there. So I feel like mixing them doesn’t result in a huge stretch.”

According to Nakagawa, the piece, named after the phrase “my body, my choice,” stresses the choices people can make to become who they are, even despite the choices they could not make for themselves.

“I think art, starting with dance, should make someone look back on their life as well as have the effect to develop new insight as well,” she said. “For the works I’m performing this time around, I want people to embrace the choices people have made in their lives, no matter what they might be.”

While this is the first time Suichumegane∞ has performed in the United States, the group has performed abroad in the past, in France and Korea. Nakagawa said one aspect non-Japanese audiences have compared to domestic audiences, was their preconceived notions with cultural symbols, such as noh masks.

“I noticed the way people interpret the masks are different. I think people outside of Japan are more readily able to see the mysteriousness, the scariness or the beauty of the masks,” Nakagawa said.

While she appreciated the deeper questions Japanese audiences sometimes have based on their cultural understanding of noh theater, she also appreciated how audiences outside of Japan embraced the piece as is.

In Nakagawa’s second piece, “Anchor,” she strapped multiple kazoos on her mouth as she sits on a chair and emulates a chicken in a coop. Nakagawa said the title refers to the last runner in a relay team. She often ran in the crucial position in races as a fast runner herself, but she also reflected on how she was potentially the last member of her own family lineage.

“I wonder about whether I will end the Nakagawa bloodline. It’s the fear that I may have become the anchor runner and I have to ask myself if that is OK,” she said. “And despite that, I have feelings that I want to be that way, and these thoughts inspired the meaning for ‘Anchor’ for me, as the last runner. And when I later learned about a ship’s anchor … I realized I’m the one anchoring everything to this point, so I felt a high degree of affinity with this piece using this word.”

Kyoko Yoshida, founding executive director of U.S./Japan Cultural Trade Network, along with SFIAF director Andrew Wood scouted Suichu-megane∞ while attending the Yokohama Performing Arts Meeting in late 2023.

Yoshida, who also practices works rooted in noh theater, was drawn to Nakagawa’s group for their incorporation of noh masks and traditional dance. She said the movement Nakagawa incorporated in “my choice, my body” fluidly switched between male and female body language used in classical dance, which created movements that left audiences asking, “What was that about?” after the show.

She and Wood, however, were further impressed by Nakagawa’s proud declaration of being a minority: proudly, albeit jokingly, she called herself a “first-generation bisexual” in her artist biography along with her fellow group members Nemoto, who is “first-generation” gay, and Kim, a third-generation Zainichi Korean.

“We live in a city of thousands of artists, and what we look for when we go out looking internationally, is for people who are who are very good, was one, but who are bringing a perspective that couldn’t be created here,” Woods told the Nichi Bei News. “They are bringing news and information from their part of the world, but the news that they’re bringing is of interest to people here.”

In turn, Nakagawa said she hoped to take her experience in America to share with others back home in Japan as well.

“There’s a lot I can’t do by just myself, but I hope to take whatever I get here back to Japan and share it with other people,” she said.