Kota Yamazaki can make one forget they are at a dance concert and are instead seeing/hearing a language that makes perfect, beautiful sense. His dance works should include the tag “no experience required” for the uninitiated and “welcome home” for dance mavens. – Michael Reed

ASU Gammage will be the world premiere site for Kota Yamazaki’s OQ. OQ is the sound for “palace” in Japanese, and this new work will include aspects of architecture and Japanese poetry to evoke Eastern and Western ideas and rituals around the idea of the palace. Kota Yamazaki makes dances that you can’t take your eyes off of through his unique singular style. Yamazaki’s Fluid Technique seamlessly fuses the physical with the spiritual and emotional and defies what we would think is possible from the human body. Yamazaki has worked with dance companies in Africa, Japan, New York and other places around the globe to great critical acclaim, but perhaps his true gift is the ability to excite non-dancer and dancer audiences alike.