International Arts Initiative General Incorporated Association
Representative Profile
Yuko Shimoji
Born in 1999, she spent her childhood in Washington DC, USA. At the age of 16, she studied abroad at the School of Alberta Ballet in Canada. In 2017, she entered the Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Letters, Sophia University. From the summer of the same year, she worked as a professional dancer for a total of four years at Rudra Béjart Ballet in Lausanne, Switzerland, and Martha Graham Dance in New York, USA.
She returned to Japan due to the COVID-19 pandemic and began social contribution activities by providing ballet classes to child welfare facilities at her own expense, and became a general incorporated association in 2022. While aiming to further expand her activities, she recognized the challenges of funding and, in order to reaffirm the values required in a capitalist society, she spent two years studying in another industry, and restarted the general incorporated association with a new structure in August 2024.
In addition, in 2019, he won the Best Choreography Award at one of the world's three major ballet competitions held in the United States, which led to a work he directed and choreographed being danced at the 9/11 memorial service held at Ground Zero and broadcast nationwide in the United States. From 2020 to 2023, he will provide choreography works mainly in Israel and France. In 2023, he placed third in the preliminary round of a choreography competition held in Turin, Italy, becoming the first Japanese person to qualify for the finals.