Barbara Bourget

Barbara Bourget, photo by Yukiko Onley

Barbara has been teaching dance for more than 50 years and has choreographed over 180 dance works. She began ballet training at the age of 11 with Mara McBirney, from 16 to 19, was a scholarship student at the Royal Winnipeg Ballet School and also performed with the company. At the age of 19, Barbara joined Les Grands Ballets Canadiens for several years. For the past 50 years, Barbara has been performing with contemporary dance companies including Mountain Dance, Paula Ross Dance Company, Evelyn Roth Moving Sculpture Company, Judith Marcuse Dance Projects, EDAM, and Kokoro Dance.

Her butoh studies have primarily been with Koichi and Hiroko Tamano, Natsu Nakajima, Yumiko Yoshioka, and Akaji Maro, as well as workshops in Germany, Japan, and San Francisco.

Barbara's classes merge elements of butoh and ballet and include improvisation and choreography from over 180 dance works that she has created. Dance critic Max Wyman wrote that Barbara danced with her heart on her sleeve and her body on red-alert. Her classes develop a rigorous attention to the art of dance.

Jay Hirabayashi

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Jay Hirabayashi, photo by Chris Randle

Jay began dancing in 1977 at the Paula Ross Studio. He was invited to join the Paula Ross Dance Company one year later. He met Barbara when she joined the company in 1979 and they toured across Canada with Paula until 1982. Barbara and Jay performed with the Evelyn Roth Moving Sculpture Company across Canada, including Robert Davidson's Potlatch for the Living Haida in Masset, and at the 1980 Edinburgh Festival.
Jay performed briefly with Mountain Dance before becoming an inaugural member of the Karen Jamieson Dance Company in 1982 while also forming EDAM with Barbara, Peter Bingham, Ahmed Hassan, Lola MacLaughlin, Jennifer Mascall, and Peter (now Lola) Ryan.

In 1986, Barbara and Jay formed Kokoro Dance with the intention of pursuing butoh as their primary dance aesthetic. Jay has been teaching dance for the past 30 years and has choreographed over 80 dance works. A former downhill ski racer competing in the United States and Canada and as a member of the University of Alberta ski team, Jay's classes begin with a warmup influenced by his athletic background in strength and stamina exercises and follows with transmission of 40 years of butoh research.

Salome Nieto

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Salomé Nieto, photo by Donna Hagerman

Salomé's class is tailored for movers of all skill levels. It merges concepts and ideas she has explored over her four-decade career as a dance instructor and her thirty years working with Kokoro Dance.
With an emphasis on sensation, use of imagery, and the articulation of body and space, Salomé's class is influenced by her experience with butoh and modern dance techniques. The class begins with a physical warm-up, followed by technical work, and the exploration of movement sequences. It has an added focus on improvisation and introspective work, offering a deeper understanding of movement and self-expression.

604-662-7441
#236-111 West Hastings Street Vancouver BC Canada V6B1H4

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Kokoro acknowledges that it is on unceded territories belonging to the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations.
We are immensely grateful to be allowed to continue to be here.