Bonsai Lab is a genre-bending dance group that incorporates a variety of traditions, styles and media. The together they summon the power of the unseen and unheard through movement, gesture, sound, narrative, and stagecraft.
Bonsai Lab is an extension of the open, interactive relationship with the audience that is central to Funk Buddha’s work.
Bonsai Lab is an extension of the open, interactive relationship with the audience that is central to Funk Buddha’s work.
Players
New York
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Akim Funk Buddha
Director/Choreographer of the Bonsai Lab , Akim Funk Buddha creates borderless performance art, fusing sounds and movements from different genres, and drawing on a full spectrum of cultural traditions and artistic disciplines. His field of operation ranges from high-energy Classic Hip Hop rhymes, beat-boxing and tap, to Mongolian throat-singing, Balinese Baris, and – crucially – the Japanese Art of Tea. He is the creator of original works performed nationally and internationally, including at Lincoln Center, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Blue Note, LaMaMa E.T.C., Joe’s Pub, PS122, Rubin Museum, Whitney Museum, etc. His well-received experimental Urban Tea Ceremony premiered at the Kennedy Center, and the Brooklyn Botanic Garden invited him to create several related works for their annual Sakura Matsuri Festival. |
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Rima Fand
Rima Fand has been a creator and musician in Akim’s Urban Orchestra since 2011. She has performed with him at many venues in NYC including the BAM Café, the Blue Note, and the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. Along with being a violinist and vocalist, she is also a composer with a passion for multi-disciplinary and cross-cultural collaboration. She has created music for performances ranging from innovative puppet theater to large-scale tableau vivant to contemporary musical theater to clown shows. She also performs with many creative musical ensembles, inspired by styles including Balkan and Middle Eastern music, Americana, and the mbira music of Zimbabwe. She is currently composing her first chamber opera, entitled Precipice, with the support of American Opera Projects. www.rimafand.com |
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Jessica Ho
Jessica Ho aka Twilight -Born and raised in Malaysia, graduated summa cum laude with a BFA in Dance at Texas Christian University. She has a diploma in Dance from the National Arts Academy (Malaysia), training extensively in Asian traditional dance forms—Chinese, Malay, and Indian Bharata Natyam—as well as Western contemporary dance. Jessica has been working with Akim as Principal Dancer for several years on developing an alchemy of urban ethnic styles of dance. Her work with Akim Funk Buddha, involves combining various Asian dance styles, including aerial dance with urban ( Hip Hop) aesthetics like Waving, Tuts and body balancing. Jessica has performed with the Funk Buddha Bonsai Lab at Kennedy Center, Blue Note, BAM, Sakura Matsuri at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, New York Dance Parade, and Okeechobee music arts festival amongst many. Jessica has won numerous top placing awards at Malaysia’s national level Classical Ballet Competition, including scholarships to perform internationally. As a dancer, Jessica has most recently worked with BAILA Society (New York’s leading Latin Dance company), Robin Becker Dance (Modern/Contemporary), Surati for Performing Arts (a classical Indian and Bollywood dance company). Other specializations include Aerial Silks and Adage - a genre pioneered by Francois Szony that utilizes overhead lifts, throws and drops. www.jessicaho.net Insta: @topazjessica |
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Chihiro Kobayashi
Since 2012, she has been training and performing with Akim Funk Buddha’s Bonsai Lab,perfecting her original experimental Urban / Hip-Hop dance styles with multiple traditional dance forms: Classical ballet, African, Japanese and Balinese. As Akim’s associate director and Principal Dancer, she helped develop new pieces, and performed in his shows at Blue Note, BAMcafé, Brooklyn Botanic Garden’s Sakura Matsuri, Dance Parade NYC, Okeechobee music festival and at the Kennedy Center. Training under Akim also led her to win championships in the Experimental category in dance battles in Waacktopia in 2012, and House Dance International in 2014 and 2015. Born and raised in Yokohama, Japan, Chihiro “Cute-Beat” encountered Hip-Hop culture and started performing at clubs and venues mainly in Yokohama and Tokyo. In 2008 she established her own dance class/crew, “dance-AHO-lic.” In 2011, she relocated to New York, where she finished a yearlong program at Broadway Dance Center. She had Future (E.O.F.) as mentor. She performs with dance company Freestyle Expression, funk band Days Of Wild, and the Japanese-themed improv comedy game show Batsu! at venues such as B. B. King ’ s, NYC’s the Bitter End, and the Montauk Music Festival. Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/chihirocutebeat |
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Kimberly “Galaxxxy” Tate
Kimberly “Galaxxxy” Tate is a multidisciplinary embodied truth-seeker. Her artistry is restorative, relational, anti-racist, body-based and socially-engaged future-building by design. As a movement artist, architect, teacher and community builder she crafts bold spaces, drawings, dance and ritual experiences. Her experimental dance movements are intuitively and elementally sourced, remixing urban diasporic rhythms including capoeira, house and jazz with re-embodied Southeast-Asian/Filipino ancestral spirits. Representing Akim Funk Buddha’s Bonsai Lab, Kimberly Galaxxxy has presented internationally and at BAM, Kennedy Center Millenium Stage, House Dance International, Unity Palace Theater and many others. Architate.com Instagram: @architate / @dancitecture |
Japan
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Yuzu Natsumi ( Collaborator)
Yuzu Natsumi is a Japanese singer/songwriter who started her career as a pianist at age three, performed in theater as an actor as an adolescent, and studied modern dramatic arts at Ochanomizu University, Tokyo. Yuzu plays piano, shamisen and an electric Koto that creates distinctive original Japanese sounds and is tuned to synchronize with the western music scale. Yuzu sings, writes, and performs in various styles, including “Urban Folk,” “J Funk,” and “J Pop,” combining urban, traditional and modern elements, from the instrumentation to the subject matter of her songs. In 2014, Yuzu met Brooklyn-based global Funk/Hip Hop artist Akim Funk Buddha, who was on a cultural trip to Japan. During this time the two collaborated and Yuzu further developed her raw spontaneous musicality, generating ideas for creative, genre-bending music. Upon Akim's recommendation, Yuzu traveled to New York City to pursue her musical dream. |
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Ryotaro Souryou Matsumura
Master Ryotaro is a noted practitioner of Tea Ceremony, based mainly in Yokohama at the Urasenke School. Master Ryotaro has been working with Akim since Akim’s 2014 US/Japan Creative Artist Exchange Fellowship and continues to closely follow his evolution as a “cultural alchemist,” as he calls Akim. He continues to help Akim move forward in the awareness and practice of the Way of Tea. Ryotaro Souryou Matsumura on Akim Funk Buddha: “I was very excited when I watched Akim’s performance for the first time. He was collaborating with traditional Japanese dancers with his beat-boxing. Tea Ceremony, Traditional Japanese dance and choreography seem to be considered old fashioned. However, I believe that tradition can be very creative and can keep transforming as time goes. I felt Akim’s performance gave me assurance of the strong believes I’ve have. His performance has given a new wave to Japanese tradition. The collaboration with beat box and Japanese dance was so thrilling. I want to do another performance with him in the future. Although you might think Tea Ceremony and beat boxing are totally different things, I believe something new and amazing can happen through these unexpected collaborations. I felt Akim already knew about a basic concept of Tea Ceremony from the very beginning. Surely, the residue of Tea Ceremony is too complicated and hard to remember. However he immediately understood the way of tea. One of the most important concepts is to accept the other and appreciate something unknown. He knows that very well.” |
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Yasuyo Omoto
Yasuyo Omoto has been a member of Tani Momoko Ballet Company since 1972. She received the Tokyo Shinbun all Japan dance competition grand prize from Minister of Education in 1973 and has been the judge of the competition for the past decade. She studied and performed in Cuban national ballet company and Ballet academy of Monaco as foreign art researcher of Cultural Agency (文化庁派遣芸術家在外研修員) in 1978. After witnessing and experiencing her daughter Chihiro’s dance style with Akim at his Bonsai Lab, she decided to explore what it would be like to dance with them in their next production. |