When I invited Ayako Kato to lead a workshop for the first iteration of Ballet Unboxed in 2024, I knew she would bring a perspective on ballet that few others could offer. What I experienced in that workshop confirmed it: Ayako's approach to tracing our own movement history can be applied far beyond ballet. The concepts she shared about spirals, alignment, and the relationship between floor work and barre exercises stayed with me long after the workshop ended.

The pacing was different from any ballet class I had taken. It was not about "do this, do this, do this." It was about receiving information about ourselves. Even though we were on the floor, I found myself thinking about ballet—contextualizing tendus and fondus through a different mindset. I was thinking about external rotation in a new way, understanding spirals differently. When we arrived at the barre, the few exercises we did felt transformed.

This is the power of learning with others, guided by someone who has traced their own complex relationship with movement. I am grateful Ayako agreed to return for Ballet Unboxed 2026!

Reflections Since the First Workshop

I asked Ayako what thoughts had come up for her since leading her first Ballet Unboxed workshop.

Ballet planted the seed for my own physical practice. Yet, how I took it from there is the question. I encountered many different dance forms in the U.S. as well as in Japan. I enjoy and respect each one with their own beauty, history, and cultural backgrounds.”

For Ayako, Ballet Unboxed offered an opportunity to step back and examine her relationship with ballet from a bird's eye view—something that is difficult when you are inside the form, when your body-mind is the medium of the art. She reflected on how challenging it is to look at ourselves objectively while we are dancing. This insight shaped the theme of her upcoming workshop: viewing our relationships with ballet—or any dance form—objectively, as part of a universal "body" perspective.

The Departure and the Return to Ballet

I was curious about Ayako's journey away from ballet and into other movement forms. She left ballet at age 19.

"I literally felt freedom of expression. I created a solo called 'Misty Walk,' expressing solitude amongst crowds in a busy town like Tokyo with just walking motion, dodging and bumping into others, occasionally stopping and observing. I could express 'me in the present.' I didn't need to do grand jeté and pirouette."

At a Japanese modern dance school, students were encouraged to create their own pieces. For someone coming from ballet, this was a release.

Eventually when Ayako came to the United States, she encountered the historical modern dance techniques directly from former company members: Fall and Recovery from Doris Humphrey, Contraction and Release from Martha Graham, dancing in Paul Taylor's "Esplanade" and Merce Cunningham's "Changing Steps." She also studied Release Technique.

She described discovering how movements are connected through spirals, how the body can alternate between outward and inward rotation, creating seamless energetic exchange. The spinal curves of Graham and Cunningham were new territory for a former ballerina. In Paul Taylor's work, she had to become friends with gravity, jumping into others and sliding to the ground.

Ayako also took a deep dive into East Asian forms. She began practicing Tai Chi, studying Noh Theater dance, and attending Kazuo Ohno's Butoh workshops.

"Eastern movement is inside out. Not physically large and showy. Really charged internally and emitting externally."

She recalled watching a famous Kabuki performer, Tamasaburō, simply standing still on stage. Even from the fifth floor of the theater, his presence was radiating. This led her to question the difference between ballet's outward expression and the internal charge of traditional Japanese movement.

When Ayako returned to ballet, she brought all of this with her.

"I could re-educate my muscle fibers. I could teach different pathways of how I move."

With anatomical knowledge and somatic studies, she approached ballet with a new brain, one that understood why and how movements work for her body. Floor barre exercises, which she experienced for the first time were revelatory: a different approach to understanding the body before jumping into holding the barre with a stiff body.

Later, after returning to Japan, Ayako had a chance to perform at the National Theater of Japan in pointe shoes after more than ten years away from them.

"I still remember the final moment. I was so satisfied. That was one of the graduations—from trauma. I did it."

Her former ballet teacher acknowledged her as a human who loves dance and wants to keep pursuing it rather than as someone who is "incapable as a ballerina.”

"I myself became unboxed."

The Art of Being

I asked Ayako what common aspects she perceives across the diverse forms of dance she has experienced.

"The most wonderful thing we perceive and experience through dance is the sense of aliveness, sense of now. And being humane. Staying alive and the recognition that I am a human."

Dance brings us to the facts of ephemerality, and because of that, the joy of existence. Dance makes this happen.

"Deepened being, in the moment.. That's why I say, dance is the art of being.”

Ayako emphasized something that should be obvious but increasingly is not: dance needs to be done live, by someone alive. That person carries all the history and memories in their body—the history of humanity, the history of life. They are influenced by their own culture, their experiences, and their environment. From all of that, we see full expression.

"When the dancer is betting their life to express the moment—the moment which never comes back again—that thing can be eternal too. And that's why dance never dies. It keeps being in ourselves. As we dancers say, life is dance."

This is what Ayako sees as the common thread across all dance forms: it is a life-betting art form.

Why Keep Developing Your Own Form?

The answer connects to the question Ayako keeps asking herself: Who am I?

"We dance not only for ourselves—it needs to be seen! It needs to be shared with other people."

She spoke about quantum entanglement—how observation itself matters, how our thoughts have gravity and impact others. The physicist Karen Barad's concept of "intra-action" resonates with Ayako: the world emerges through relationships, through the co-existence of observer and observed. The human body is the source of action.

This is not abstract philosophy for Ayako. It is the reason she continues to develop her own dance form—to express, to be observed, to uplift, and to participate in the emergence of meaning.

A Glimpse of the Workshop

I asked Ayako for a preview of what participants can expect.

She will guide people through the endless possibilities the body can make. She will talk about letting go, about the oppositional forces seeking balance. Intentional practice will allow for things to surface naturally. We will feel the feedback, and it will translate through our mind-bodies.

"What is freedom? When no one tells you what to do, what kind of decision do you make? As a human, as a dancer, as a person carrying all the history and experiences..."

We are waves. We are particles. We are constantly defining possibilities among probabilities. Ayako wants participants to see those possibilities and acknowledge the choices they are making within their flow of movement.

The workshop will include traditional ways of practicing—ballet barre, for example—alongside questions like: What would you do in your own dance form if it's not tendu? How do you warm up your feet? When the opportunity for freestyle emerges, how would you like to evolve your dance form, and why?

We Hope You Will Join Us!

Ayako's workshop invites you to trace your own dance history, to view your relationship with ballet—or any movement form—objectively and expansively. Whether you are new to dance or have practiced for decades, this is an opportunity to explore what it means to be a mover carrying all your history and experience in your body.