Aiko Kinoshita has been involved in contemporary dance for the last 20 years as a choreographer, performer, teacher, and arts administrator. Her choreography, has been presented nationally and in Canada, Korea and Japan and has received support from the Bossak-Heilbron Charitable Foundation, 4Culture, City of Issaquah, City of Bellevue, and Allied Arts, among others.

Since moving to the Pacific Northwest in 1998, Aiko has danced with numerous regional choreographers, performed in her own work through acornDance, and toured nationally and internationally as a member of Lingo Dancetheatre (2002-2007). Aiko was a founding member of Left Field Dance Collective and currently collaborates with Aaron Swartzman as UMAMI Performance. Aiko holds a MFA in Dance from the University of Illinois, teaches at Velocity Dance Center where she was Managing Director until 2005 and is a resident artist at Open Flight Studio.

Aiko is grateful to be able to play with the language of dance and all of its possibilities, offering fresh perspectives on life; and to explore and express her identity as an artist, citizen, multi-ethnic, physical being, through movement.
On the most basic level, she is interested in the relationship between motion and emotion and the question of “what moves people”? Although props, spoken text and other theatrical elements are often present in her work, her primary commitment is to the movement itself—full-bodied or gestural, highly technical or pedestrian, created by her own body or by another dancer. Her on-going research reflects her interest in improvisation, natural physicality, dynamic partnering, and technique.